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Your e-Mails

Ian	Good afternoon sir, I was recently browsing your "Missing In Action" section and came upon "Banjo" in the list. Coincidentally, a few days later I was visiting a friend in the Emsland area of Germany and chanced upon a biscuit of the same name in the local supermarket. As I remember the Banjo, it was a wafer based chocolate biscuit, a 2-fingers-in-a-pack format, and as I hope you can make out from the attached photo, the German bought Banjo does indeed adhere to this standard. I didn't ask my German friend what the German word for the English word 'Banjo' was, but I wished I had, because if I discovered it was a different word altogether, then this may have established some sort of common origin of the English and German banjo. This tribute/ counterfeit/ cousin is produced by Master Foods, (Austria 7091 BREITENBRUNN) and the chocolate covered wafer carrying a chopped hazel nut layer is delivered as 2 wafers weighing a total of 31g, and each 2 finger unit can come as part of a 5 multipack. The colouring of the wrapper is different to as I think back on the Banjo, I get an image of a blue wrapper, but I admit I could well be confusing this with the "Blue Riband/ Blue Ribbon" ("I got those can't get enough of those Blue Riband Blues, Blue Riband's the wafer biscuit I always choose. When my woman...... I am relatively new to the site and I apologise if I am covering old ground here or opening up cases which have long since been closed. Regards Ian P.S None of my Dutch mates have ever heard of the Siroop Wafel coming under a layer of chocolate (recent correspondence). I will ask a Belgian when I see one, there seem to be some regional differences in some biscuits in the Benelux countries.
	Nicey replies: Ian, I have to cast my mind back to the very early 1970's for my memories of Banjos so I would have been six or seven then. I do remember that the cross section was very square, that the wafer was very light and quite deep with not many layers and that there was a layer of caramel on top with nutty bits in. Also there were two wafers per pack. Now your German Banjos seem to match this memory in every detail, plus they are made by global food giant Masterfoods, who are well known for Twix, Mars, Maltesers, Milky Way and so on. So it seems that you have indeed found the Banjo's of old safe and well in Germany. This is very exciting news and could dictate our plans this summer as team NOCTAASD forages around on continental Europe.
j ac Dad's Cookies Review	Playbox cookies - ah they were such a favorite - weren't our tastebuds simple! sometimes I would carefully lick at the inpenetrable icing for awhile to slowly remove the design.... yes, back before video games.... Someone could make a small fortune bringing back this classic..... oh, perhaps I shouldn't have said that..... Dads cookies - I was flying from California to Toronto, Canada in 1985... five hours in the air and a lovely older lady sitting beside me to chat with. She brought out her knitting (back before knitting needles were a threat to our safety!) and shared a few "how to knit" lessons with me inflight... even letting me work on the lovely piece she was making.... and we chatted. It turned out she was the "Mom" so to speak of the "Dad" whose recipe it was for the hallowed cookie.... Me, sitting with such a celebrity... but I had to ask "The cookies just don't taste the same as they did when I was a child.. do they?". She smiled and responded "When my husband sold the recipe (in his retirement years) it gave the company full right to change the recipe in any way they wished....." and she was surprised and praised my discerning tastebuds.... That's my story - and I'm sticking to it. It was lovely to chat and share a cup of tea with you.
	Nicey replies: Thanks for sharing that brush with biscuit celebrities with us.
Larry Koch Khong Guan creamy chocolate biscuits Review	Hello, I agree with your assessment of the Khong Guan chocolate biscuits - their chocolatiness is dubious, to say the least. Having made the mistake of buying them at a Chinese supermarket here, however, I summoned the courage to try some other Khong Guan products, generally with more satisfactory results: KG Banana Cream - despite the artificiality of the flavouring and some questionable additives for colour (turmeric?!), really tasty KG Custard Creams - good custard flavour, but filling is possibly either too generous or not the right consistency, as it tends to escape at the sides and stick to one's fingers KG Orange Creams - as with the banana, the flavouring is decidedly artificial (really more orange *fragrance* than anything else) yet strangely addictive. KG Sultana Biscuits - unfortunately many of these had shattered during shipping and they really need more sultanas in them, but it's as close as we'll get to Garibaldis here. Hope this is useful to someone. Regards, Larry Koch Toronto
	Nicey replies: Thanks Larry, I think the basic nub of what you are saying is that we managed to try the really grotty ones.
Claire Beecroft	Hello there, Here in leafy Sheffield the Fig Roll crisis has been hitting hard. No major supermarket has any and only Sainsbury's has taken the sensible step of putting a little note on the shelf where the Fig Roll price ticket would usually be, explaining the 'industry-wide' shortage. I also note that unlike other retailers, they are leaving the gap on the shelf where the FR packs should be. I can only think that either they: a) anticipate re-stocking in the near future and so don't want to waste time re-aligning the entire biscuit aisle to cover up the empty space OR b) see it as a fitting mark of the gravity of the situation and are leaving the space out of respect and/or as an optimistic vigil. If health and safety regulations did not prevent it I'd pop a tea-light candle in the gap myself. On the bright side a small newsagents on Glossop Road (near to 'New Roots') has a stock of Crawfords brand Fig Rolls- not my brand of choice but obviously we can't be fussy in these difficult times. I'm limiting myself to two packs at the moment but if there are any left on the way home this afternoon I might not be able to resist. Finger's crossed that the Turkish Fig-Farmers will be back in business soon, Claire
	Nicey replies: I managed to pick up a pack of Jacobs this morning so it looks like the cut then bake fig rolls are weathering the crisis for some reason. I'm very pleased to hear that you have got hold of some Crawfords as I had my doubts that they would keep on making them once Jacobs joined United Biscuits.
Emily HobNob Review	Hello Nicey, Wifey & YMOS, At last! Sainsbury's are stocking the elusive dark chocolate HobNob- at least a certain branch in Greater Manchester is (I should probably keep the exact location under wraps to avoid a stampede- I don't want to be responsible for the M6 being even more gridlocked than usual). Anyway, I managed to show remarkable restraint and only bought one packet, although considerably less when I got them home and ate 3 in one go. They'd just sidled back onto the shelves as though they'd never been away- no attention drawn to them at all. I would have thought the least they deserved was a label saying "back by popular demand" or something, perhaps even their own end-of-aisle display. I've also noticed that Sainsbury's, at least the couple of branches I frequent in the Greater Manchester area, seem to have stopped selling Tim Tams, although I've had reports of branches in the South still selling them. Maybe it's a whole new North/South biscuit divide: the South gets exotic foreign biscuits, while the North gets flat cap-wearing HobNobs. I'm already picturing surreptitious meetings in a service station cafe (probably with rubbish tea in chipped mugs) somewhere in the Midlands with people from opposite ends of the country swapping packs of DC HobNobs and Tim Tams under the table before smuggling them back home and opening biscuit-speakeasies. But that's probably just my imagination running wild. Emily
	Nicey replies: Thanks for the Dark Chocolate Hobnob tip off. Will we all start showing our age by calling them Plain rather than Dark I wonder, much in the way my Nan used to call our 1970's Sony Music centre with its pre-soft eject top loading fling it across the room cassette eject - the radiogram. Actually I'm showing my age just divulging that. Some of you are probably wondering what a cassette is. You make a good point about the TimTams the've not been catching my eye recently either.
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