Your Views

Keep your e-mails pouring in, it's good to know that there are lots of you out there with views and opinions.

To help you work out what is what, are now little icons to help you see biscuit related themes. And now you can see at a glance which are the most contested subjects via this graph (requires Flash 6.0 plugin).

Please keep your mails coming in to nicey@nicecupofteaandasitdown.com

If you like, you can use this search thingy to find stuff that matches with any of the icons you pick, or use the fantastic free text search, Yay!

Type some key words here to search the feedback section

Your e-Mails

Robin and Danielle	Hello Nicey and Wifey We only found your website three days ago by complete accident, and now it’s the most favourite of our favourites. It’s especially appreciated, since we live in Romania, where the selection of biscuits in the shops is dire, and the black tea is prohibitively expensive (they all drink fruit teas here, for their supposed health benefits). Anyway, the way I stumbled across you was that I was trying to do a Google search for a biscuit called ‘Decadent’ that existed for a brief time in Britain in the late 1980’s (I think). It lived up to its name – it was big, loaded with chocolate chunks and other stuff, expensive and superb. Do you (or any readers) remember it and know what happened to it? Best wishes, Robin and Danielle
	Nicey replies: In the late 1980s my life style was very far from decadent, and I was probably subsisting on large packets of GingerNuts and the odd Digestive. So I never tangled with these biscuits, although they do sound very shoulder pads and loads of money.
Mrs Sarah Mint-Viscount	Dear Nicey, Wifey & YMOS, While looking through the feedback section of NCOTAASD, I noticed various postings on the subject of kettles, and all the talk of kettles reminded me of the time I spent in County Kerry, and the strange kettle-y activity that went on while I was there. I was there for about a year doing a course, and it turned out to be a place of real significance to me in tea-related terms. First of all, I had foolishly neglected to develop a taste for tea previous to doing that course, but while there, I finally discovered the love for a nice brew. This probably happened because of the canteen’s policy of charging (a lot) for all non-tea beverages e.g. orange juice, but not charging anything for the tea. It’s the old story: student meets free food/drink, student falls in love with the free food/drink - textbook stuff really Second of all, it was in Kerry that I encountered an exciting new sport: Kettle Racing. A fellow student from Galway had played this unusual sport on a previous stint at student life, and he showed us the way. Basically what it involved was the following: whenever there was a house party, everyone was encouraged to bring the kettles from their own houses. Then, at some point during the evening, we would all congregate with them in the kitchen, and an adjudicator would be appointed (a neutral, who hadn’t brought a kettle). The kettles were emptied, lined up, and plugged in. The adjudicator would then take out a measuring jug and put a precise 1 litre of water into each kettle, ensuring that everybody’s water was equally cold…. and it was “On your buttons, set, GO”. Naturally, we all got feverish with excitement as we waited to see whose kettle would get to clicking-off point first - well you can imagine the sort of emotion it would stir up. When your trusty kettle – the water boiler extraordinaire, and source of so many a good cuppa - is pitted against other kettles, you badly, badly want it to win. No-one wants some upstart kettle from down the road to be considered superior. So there were shreaks and roars as each person urged on their kettle, the representive of their house: “Come on 27 Millroad Crescent”… “Go on 15 Killeen Drive”. Unfortunately it did get nasty occasionally as people couldn’t come to terms with their kettle being beaten. So there would be accusations thrown around, about elements being pre-warmed with a boiling immediately prior to the race preparations, or overfilling by an allegedly impartial adjudicator. These unpleasantries aside, it was, all-in-all, a good giggle. I know some people will immediately disapprove, thinking of the environmental impact of all those kettles being boiled unnecessarily, but I would point out in our defence that the kettle races held us all in such thrall that pretty much every other electrical device was abandoned while the race went on – every playstation, DVD player, television, CD player or radio was switched off as we focused on the exciting events in the kitchen. Anyway, I just wondered if anyone else has played this outside of Co. Kerry, or indeed Ireland. I have a suspicion that, if at all, the sport will only be found amongst other students (Kings and Queens of too-much-time-on-your-hands activities).
	Nicey replies: I think we could only condone such a environmentally dubious sport if all the boiled water was used to make tea for the needy.
Sylvia Johnson	Sylvia and Alice have been busy this September making very large and very fine cakes. Here is photographic evidence of our Battenburg slices and Butterfly buns. We would love to see them on your ever so splendid website.
	Nicey replies: Exquisite work.
S K Chew South East Asian Multireview Review	Hello nicey, The zhishuyu is the hydrogenated vegetable shortening (probably palm oil based) and the pengsongji is the leavening agent probably Ammonium/Sodium Bicarb. Good Luck to you. Best regards, S K CHEW
	Nicey replies: Thanks very much, I'm very happy to have that cleared up, a nice way to close out the week.
Deborah Simpson Bakers Iced Zoo Review	Dear Nicey, I love your website, having been pointed in its direction by my teenage daughter who came across the name somewhere and said it sounded like me. Having grown up in South Africa I was delighted to read the references to Tennis biscuits and to find they are available (with a bit of effort) in England. They were one of my favourites when I was a kid, not so much because of the taste, though they do make a great ‘fridge cake’ – my mum used to make a rather good one involving lime jelly whipped with evaporated milk on a base of crushed Tennis biscuits; very Sixties but yummy – but because I loved the pretty lacy flower pattern. On the subject of South African biscuits, the ones I remember best were Zoo biscuits, which were not chocolate biscuits but iced in pastel colours with (not very recognisable) silhouettes of animals on the front. Others might like to know that there is a stall on Brighton Pier which sells South African foods, including said Zoo biscuits, though they now seem to be iced in much more lurid shades than I recall. They taste the same though (and it’s still a challenge to work out what the animals are meant to be).. The best thing was being able to prove to my English children that they weren’t a figment of my imagination. At the same stall I also bought Fanta Grape (which I don’t think I’ve ever had in England) and a cake known as ‘koeksusters’, which are an extremely sweet and sticky plaited dough soaked in syrup, like a cross between doughnuts and the Middle Eastern pastry called baklava, but without the nuts. Does anyone else know these? Best wishes Deborah
	Nicey replies: Yes we enjoyed our pack of Zoo biscuits, and decided that many of the animals were probably slugs.
	<< Previous | More >>