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.

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Your e-Mails

Joan McSwiggan	Hello Nicey, I have just discovered your website.I can't believe it ! I am the world's biggest fan of tea,cakes and biscuits. My partener recently had his 50th. birthday.We decided to have a garden party. We had an urn, supplying endless hot water for mugs of tea. On top of that we had mountains of scones, clotted cream and home made jam, as well as platters of cupcakes. Everyone was blissfully happy. (P.S. Yorkshire tea rules.) Joan.
	Nicey replies: Joan, Thank you for that lovely picture of the cup cakes. It sounds like a charming event. And talking of small cakes and tea urns. Wifey and I manned the tea and cake stall at the school fair last Friday and that little lot would have traded at 20p each which at rough first count comes to £22.80. Unfortunately due to some bad planning and people neglecting to write SOLD on some of the cakes we did manage to sell a few twice, although both Wifey and I were prepared to fight our corner if Sir Alan dragged us into the board room.
Penny T	Dear Nicey, I was forced to stop drinking tea for a few months and switch to instant coffee, not through choice, but because of a drop in tea quality. I am able to drink any kind of vile coffee but I am very particular about my tea. It has to be strong, with a dash of milk, no sugar. Builder's brew if you like. I have noticed that bog standard teabags such as Tetley, PG tips and Red Label have got weaker, so weak that I have not been able to brew a satisfactory cuppa. I suspect they are mixing the tea in the bags with dark coloured sawdust. Either that or I have become more impatient. Fortunately I have found a solution to my problem. I have switched to Assam tea which always seems to come out strong enough and satisfies my craving for tea. I wonder if anyone else has noticed tea becoming weaker? If so may I suggest a switch to assam or kenyan. Yours sincerely Penny T. PS the milk chocolate Hob Nob is the King of Biscuits IMO. Chocolate digestive a close second.
	Nicey replies: I wonder if it's your water? We noticed that our trick of using one tea bag for two mugs which works well enough here for Wifey and I failed when on holiday in Ireland with softer water. This could also explain why the local blends over there were very much stronger. Have you moved house to one with a water softening system, new kettle or something?
Pete McWilliam Bahlsen Orange Choco Leibniz Review	Dear Nicey, I work in an Architects practice and as such we consume a large number of biscuits. As part of the process of producing a building we write a specification which gives detailed information about the materials to be produced. When contemplating making a scale model of a house using biscuits we came accross the problem that we don't know some of these vital pieces of information for biscuits. This information includes thermal conductivity (how well they keep the heat in), permeability (how waterproof they are) and compressive strength (how much does it take to crush, not snap them). Do you know where I could source this information? Kind Regards, Pete McWilliam
	Nicey replies: As luck would have it our book contains a small section on this very topic, where we look into the problems faced by the wicked witch in Hansel and Gretel. Unfortunately not being architects we completely overlooked thermal conductivity, permeability and compressive strength. We did consider what materials could be used to bond the biscuits together and also the impact that flocks of starlings might have on your roof. I think wafers would have a low thermal conductivity and Ginger nuts a high compressive strength. There aren't really any water proof biscuits so I think you would need to go for something chocolate covered that you could bond together. Choco Liebniz might make a great roofing material, expensive mind but I'm sure you can justify the cost. Let us know how you get on.
Mrs Liveinabin	Hi Nicey, I'm a student teacher and I thought you might like to know that next week we are having a whole week devoted to biscuits! We are going to be tasting them, looking at the packaging and design and finally designing and making our own! Hurrah for the biscuit based national curriculum! Kate (Mrs Liveinabin)
	Nicey replies: Hello Mrs Liveinabin, Good luck with all of that it sounds very enlightened. I used to enjoy collecting the YMOS from nursery, a few years back now, on biscuit baking days. There is something unique about biscuits that have been rolled and battered flat over an over again into a tough leathery dough by tiny people. They end up like a sort of biscuit jerky. What makes this even more of a delicacy is the fact that you have enter into lengthy negotiations just to get a bit of your toddlers solitary biscuit which they guard jealously. If I was to conscience the exploitation of child labour then it would be to knock up the occasional batch of their rock hard biscuits. Alas we don't seem to have a suitable icon for such an important topic.
Tim Gwynne Rich Tea Review	Dear Nicey, Sorry to clutter up your inbox with my ramblings but I am a neophyte to this site and I have to get a few things off my chest. Having perused the site and I am puzzled as to why you harbour such a negative attitude towards the lovely Nice biscuit? When I was a toddler in the early Sixties, and my parents were struggling to raise a small family, we were fobbed off with a variety of cheap biscuits in the hope that we might actually eat them occasionally (if desperate, and at gun-point). They tried us on Rich Tea, which only demonstrate traces of something that might be described as "flavour" for the first 25 seconds after the packet is opened; they tried us on Morning Coffee, which were only a marginal improvement (and mainly due to the elaborate decoration); they tried us on Lincoln, which only provide pleasure through stroking the upper surface. Once we were given long, slim biscuits with a thin, hard, lurid, swirly pink icing on top which we liked but were declared "bad for the teeth". Eventually they hit upon Nice biscuits which were not only coconutty but had granulated sugar on top. And proper Peek Frean's Nice too, which were a lovely pure white colour and not the American Tan of the modern impostor. I could eat an entire packet of Peek Frean's Nice right now, if you had a time machine and decided to use it for biscuit retrieval purposes, rather than world domination. Tim P.S. to this day my parents always have Rich Teas in our old biscuit tin with a Kingfisher painted on the lid. They are always soft and smell of damp flannels (the biscuits, not my parents). My children won't eat them either.
	Nicey replies: Its a coconut thing really. Some desiccated coconut is like wood shavings and the taste can be quite overpowering. Although in later years it seems my views on coconut may be softening somewhat I would still like to keep the Nice biscuit at a safe distance. I think this is much like old adversaries who are bound up with one another by historical events but cannot yet bring themselves to regard old foes as friends. I can also see that given the selection of biscuits you were exposed to at a young age that something with sugar on top would have been magnificent and an instant hit. People often forget in our modern days of excess that such simple things were once genuine treats. I still think of the fruit shortcake in much the same way as biscuit whose cup runneth over with bountiful goodness.
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