Your ViewsKeep 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! | Your e-Mails |
Kate Talbot |
Hi,
Just found your site and love it! Thought you might like to see my latest finsihed artwork on a biccy theme. It is made entirely from wool and is called:
Grandma, what big teeth you have!
Alas since being diagnosed coeliac ten years ago, the joy of biscuiteering is lost to me though I still have very fond memories and if I close my eyes and concentrate I can still taste a custard cream.
Ah! Those were the days!
Thanks for the memories,
Kate
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Nicey replies: I'm very impressed by your attention to detail, it elevates what could have simply been an average common or garden knitted plate of biscuits, with a knitted cup of tea and a knitted selection tray of biscuits and knitted cellophane pack complete with illustrations and knitted insert tray to something truly extraordinary.
As for those custard creams it seems the only coeliac biscuits worth messing with are the custard creams.
Its these same custard creams that have caused so much confusion recently leading the OED to include Custard Cream this year. |
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Jane Kelly |
Dear Nicey,
My elderly neighbour has just given me a tin of Danish Butter Cookies, (made in Portugal) in exchange for looking after her cat Bingo over night, thus finally refuting your claim that they are only seen at Christmas.
I wish they were – boring with that horrid trace of desiccated coconut. I have however given them to my Polish builders and they seem to like them – perhaps a new market has opened up there. |
Nicey replies: Hello Jane
That's a feat of Europe wide cooperation that would bring a tear to the eye of even the most hardened Euro-crat. Are you sure your elderly neighbour didn't get them at Christmas? Or more likely she uses her extensive leisure time to frequent the sorts of shops that sell off dodgy Christmas tins of Danish Butter Cookies (made in Portugal) in mid March.
A big Hoorah for your Polish builders and their biscuit eating ways! Wifey loves Poland and all its novelty Vodkas and Jaffa Cakes. |
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Sue Cooke |
I know that you don't usually publish recipes but here is my recipe for pink wafers.
Ingredients: cardboard, pink felt-tip pen, glue.
method: Colour cardboard pink using felt-tips. Lightly corrugate and paste together in layers.
Voila! All the taste and texture of pink wafer biscuits.
Sue |
Nicey replies: First thank you for noting that we don't usually publish recipes, and secondly this is just the sort of thing that gets the Pink Wafer supporters out on the streets protesting in angry mobs. |
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Claire Lawlor |
Hi
Can you solve a massive rumbling row we are having in the department i work in...its divided the whole unit...not a good thing in a hospital!
Can you explain to the rude, wrong, uneducated, uncouth among us why it is wrong to start on the bottom layer of the box of biscuits bought for christmas before finishing the first layer?
It appears...because its rude, wrong, ill mannered, greedy, selfish, your mum didn't allow it...won't wash with these lot. Those of us with slightly more breeding are happy to wait for the 2nd layer when the previous layer has gone!
Can you tell me your views on our dilemma? And give me a rational explanation..please?
Thanks!
Claire
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ps - happy dieting...join the club!!
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Nicey replies: Claire
Thank you for raising such and important and fundamental point. You are of course right that all layers must be finished before moving to the next. The reasons are many fold.
Firstly being a selection box everybody will have their favourites and given that there are a limited number of these they should be shared, skipping ahead is rude as it means you are being selfish and grabbing the goodies for yourself. You should have some self discipline and eat the less fantastic biscuits on the layer that needs finishing. This is not only polite but good for your own personal development as a biscuit eater, teaching you to appreciate more humble biscuits.
Secondly leaving biscuits behind and moving on is wasteful, which is obviously wrong. You should only move to next layer if you have finished the one above, or have a designated person who has willingly agreed to take care of no more than one or two troublesome biscuits such as pink wafers or coconut rings.
I could go on at length about how its precisely these sort of people who are symptomatic of a general decline in standards in society as a whole but I'll leave it there. |
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Alexandra |
Dear Nicey, Wifey and the YMOS's,
As a student I always have my cupboards stocked high with biscuits of all shapes and sizes (I must confess that one of my favourites is the pink wafer, but don't let this put you off). However recently during a time of great biscuit need I went to the cupboard only to find it was bare of all biscuit related items....apart from some 2 and a half month old Merba apple pie cookies. They were left over in their foil wrapper and additionally wrapped in a plastic carrier bag. When I bought them originally I hadn't enjoyed them as I found them too hard for my liking, despite their delicious smell, but needless to say I was desperate!
Normally biscuits that have been left open for as long as this go soggy, but this biscuits benefited from a slight softening and I gobbled up the pack. I urge you to try this, don't forget about the plastic bag over the top....can you explain why this might have helped?
Alexandra
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Nicey replies: Alexandra,
Having been educated to degree level at the same august if slightly concrete obsessed establishment as yourself I have first hand experience of subsisting on a student diet. One quickly learns to adapt to ones impoverished circumstances and try new foods as well as completely revising ones whole understanding of best before dates. I well remember some friends taking their lives in their hands as they cleaned out a catering size jar of mayonnaise which had been left in a house that they had rented. By the time they became desperate enough to do this they had already lived there for the best part of a year. The same house also proved very stimulating to its largely biology student residents due to its impressive use of assorted wall paper roll ends. These were all from the 1970s school of large orange flowers on a black background wallpaper design. The large poster they had of the H Bomb detonating at Bikini Atoll often struggled to outdo the wall paper for dramatic and imposing presence. More academic stimulation could be found behind one of the wardrobes which had its own ecosystem of slugs which were living on the tender shoots of a shrub which was managing to grow through the wall.
So I can only say with respect to your biscuits that you were fortunate to find them to your liking. I would say that the plastic bag would have helped to create a constant micro-climate in which your biscuits could exchange moisture with each other and what ever atmospheric moisture diffused in. This would allow them to go stale much more gradually which is after all why you bunged them in there in the first place. |
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