Your Views

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Your e-Mails

Gary Cridland	Dear Nicey & Wifey, After stumbling upon your magnificent web site and subsequently reading many tea related escapades a deeply buried memory came roaring to the surface of my consciousness. As a young boy growing up in South Wales I used to spend most weekends at my Grandparents farm and distinctly remember a peculiar practice that my Grandfather employed while drinking tea. My Grandmother was responsible for the process of making the tea which began by ‘warming’ the cup with boiling water after which the tea (Glengettie leaf as I remember) was poured from a pot which had been kept hot on the stove, milk was added and served with a saucer. While insisting that his tea was delivered on the hotter side of hot my Grandfathers eagerness to drink the tea resulted in him using the saucers surface area to startling effect. He would pour tea from the cup onto the saucer and then proceed to slurp the tea in short sharp bursts. This process was repeated 3 or 4 times and would often leave beads of tea on his stubbly chin which he wiped away with his cotton handkerchief before consuming the remaining tea from the cup in the usual way. As the use of saucers has diminished significantly in recent years I was wondering if this ritual of saucer-slurping is currently practiced, whether anyone has similar memories or, as I fear, consigned to a by-gone age. Love the site, keep up the good work Gary Cridland
	Nicey replies: Gary, Its my understanding that this was a standard tea drinking procedure for people's Granddads, and its been mentioned to me many a time including unsurprisingly by a London cabbie. It does seem like something that maybe Prince Philip should be doing more often to promote British culture.
Bewildebeeste Jammie Dodger Review	Reading your review of Jammie Dodgers, you say "This also makes attempts to part both biscuits somewhat futile, due to the adhesive jam". However following the biccy barrel being replenished, I discovered the elusive technique. Gripping one shortcake biscuit in each hand, one simply twists each biscuit in opposing directions, therefore stretching the jam until breaking point. The method wasn't 100% successful, the bottom biscuit has a tendency to crack if you try to pull the biscuits apart whilst twisting, but the majority of the time, i was successful. The anticlimax to all this however is that the jam is impossible to lick off wach shortcake half, rendering the process rather pointless, unless one desires to stick jammy dodger halves to the wall, in a sort of baked treat dado rail... Yours twistingly, Bewildebeeste
Stewart Davies Tunnocks Wafer Review	Re Tunnocks products. two friends from work and myself visited the factory three years ago,we were made very welcome,and left with a very generous bag of samples.We then visited the Tunnocks tearoom around the corner and had Tunnocks own mutton pie with beans and chips,triffle, scone with butter and jam,and a mug of tea,absolutely delicious.We have made visits to the tearoom every 8 weeks since that first visit and are now on first name terms with the staff.the staff at both the factory and the tearoom are a credit to Tunnocks,it looks like a happy place to work,they are all so very pleasant. Stewart
	Nicey replies: Yes, lookout Disneyland Paris, Tunnocks World is here. I wonder if they do weekend breaks?
Steve Window	Dear Nicey, Could you put your two penn'orth in please on an office dispute? It isn't a heated dispute - yet. As you know, Jacobs Family Circle comes in a rectangular box with 2 layers of varied biscuits, each layer of which is a repeat of the other. A colleague feels very strongly that the second layer should not be started upon until the first is done with. I think that it is fine to start the second layer as long as the first has been removed so that this is obvious. At the end of the tea break, the second layer can be made up to full from the remains of the first, as far as possible - any gaps in the second layer can be referred to in a short note (no need to be prolix) left on the top of the first layer. This avoids the surge of disappointment when a biscuit eater lifts the first layer expecting to see yummy favourite biscuits, only to be left bereft. I would welcome your views. Regards, Steve Window
	Nicey replies: What a terrific and important question, well done. I would definitely align with your colleague. In a free for all situation like an office then all the biscuits must be finished before starting the next layer. Any chipping away at this basic rule with sub-clauses will lead to anarchy. It's much better if every one knows where they stand, and that people excise some self discipline by having a biscuit that they are not madly keen on from time to time in-order to get to the new layer. Learning to eat the duller sorts of biscuits in a selection tin is an important life skill, however the really awful ones that almost nobody likes can be forcibly ditched on the one person who claims to like them in order to get things moving.
Margret Lawyer	Good afternoon--I was just reading your feedback page and found a complaint from "Marge" to the effect that the iced tea she had in Paris was vile and bitter. Quite possibly true, but it's a really bad idea to drink iced tea in France anyway, where, I am told, they have neither hot-tea experts (Britain) nor iced-tea experts (southern U.S.). As a Northerner transplanted to Virginia, I have never been able to develop a fondness for the classic Southern iced tea, a.k.a. "the table wine of the South". Some might describe it as vile, but certainly not bitter, as the amount of sugar dissolved in it makes it very nearly thick enough to pour on your pancakes--but my in-laws drink the stuff by the gallon. However, without the sugar (my personal preference) or at least without quite so much sugar, it does make a very refreshing cold drink in this weather. Perhaps the reason you think of it as "muck" is that you haven't tried it when it was properly prepared. My favorite method is Sun Tea. Take a clear glass gallon jar with a lid, fill it with fresh cold water, and add an appropriate number of your favorite variety of tea bags (if one tea bag makes one 10-oz. cup, that should be 12 or 13 bags). Then put on the lid and set the jar outside in a sunny spot for at least three hours, but no longer than four. Bring it inside, squeeze out the bags, stir in sugar to taste (none, for me) and serve in a tall glass over ice. Refrigerate the leftovers. And Marge, please do try it this way before you take Nicey's word for its being muck. You'll be glad to know that I do drink hot tea also--and lots of it, here at work where the air-conditioning gets positively Arctic sometimes. With sugar, and my favorite is Earl Grey. As for spoons, there are some coffee-flavored tablespoons lying around in the break room, but I prefer my own iced-tea spoon (like an ordinary teaspoon, stainless steel and tough enough to resist a good squeeze, except that it has a long handle) which I carry on my person at all times, as our local eateries can't be depended upon to provide a good one. Plastic spoons and plastic or wooden stirring sticks are for the birds. How are you supposed to pick up a spoonful of the tea on a stirring stick, when you want to see if all the sugar has dissolved? I've been enjoying your website very much, and your biscuit descriptions are making me salivate like mad. How about e-mailing me some? (the biscuits, not the descriptions)--Margaret
	Nicey replies: Margret, You have covered a lot of ground there. Thanks for the description on how to make gallons of tea using sunshine and ice cubes. Of course we remain resolutely unconvinced but good on you for having a go at dissuading us.
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