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!

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Your e-Mails

Sue Northcott	Hi Nicey, Our cake trolley at EDS Swansea raised £212.28. The company was kind enough donate some cash to ensure that all staff got a free Welsh cake to celebrate St David's Day. Meant I was huddling over the bakestone for a good few hours, but it was worthwhile. My fellow bakers helped me out and we had a great showing with bara brith, lemon drizzle cake, loads of nice things like caramel slices and rocky road, fairy and butterfly cakes, and the best jam and cream scones I've ever tasted. I had intended to take a photo for you, but the gannets descended as soon as the cakes appeared. We all had a good time, but by the end of the day some of us were feeling poorer and ever so slightly queasy. I went along to the Saint David's Day parade in Cardiff on the Saturday and I though it was really good. Not up to St. Patrick's Day in Dublin yet, but certainly enough to make your heart swell with pride.
	Nicey replies: Sue, Glad to hear you made lots of tea and cake propelled dosh for your Charity. Well done to all your baking colleagues too. Team NCOTAASD are just back from a week in the Alps, where the YMOS did very good impressions of small helmet wearing projectiles re-entering the earth's atmosphere. Wifey can officially now no longer keep up with them and is adapting her skiing style accordingly to a more sitting down with a hot chocolate whilst I go off and find ever steeper things for the YMOS to tackle. On the way back yesterday morning we found ourselves on Paris's Gare du Nord at 6:00 am where I was forced to drink Liptons Yellow label tea in a paper cup of hot water and milk, for 2.40 Euros. Wifey has always wanted a romantic weekend in Paris, and arriving at 5:30 am after a night spent trying to sleep and a vinyl covered shelf surrounded by ski socks didn't seem to count. Not even one little tiny bit, although we did spot the odd glimpse of the Eiffel Tower on the way out. So I better go and get that Guinness and see if we can celebrate St Patrick's Day in some style
Umami	Fig rolls used to frighten me but last week at Carrefour Paris I decided on impulse to add a packet of Boland's of Ireland Fig Rolls to my cart, along with one of Crawford's Garibaldi and McVities Digestive. Yes, English biscuits in France but one do tire of all-butter 'grandmère biscuits eventually. The fig rolls, once we opened and took our first sceptical bite, was enjoyed with great enthusiasm; we had to restrain ourselves from finishing the entire pack at a go but this morning I scoffed the rest. It looks very much like the Jacobs version, maybe it's the same thing. The filling to biscuit ratio is good for me, we're getting some Fugola to compare later.
	Nicey replies: Bolands are a brand of Jacobs, being like Crawfords to McVities. We had a pack of those several years ago now and were rather stunned / appalled to see whale oil listed as an ingredient.
Hilary Seidman	Dear Nicey and Wifey, I saw your book in the library the other day and borrowed it, and now I am going to buy copies for many members of my family who would really enjoy it. Well done, a really good read with lots of truly vital information, as you will be well aware. But I had to write to ask if anyone knows anything about Milk and Honey Creams. I doubt there was much honey in them, and possibly not any milk, but for me they will always be the quintessence of a jam sandwich cream biscuit. Slightly toffee flavour jam (the so-called "honey") and vanilla "milk". Do you think people were put off by the possible extreme messiness of a Milk and Honey Sandwich? Maybe if it was explained that it was really a toffee and vanilla biscuit then Huntley and Palmers, or whoever they call themselves now, would produce it again, thus taking me back to my childhood and doubtless providing much pleasure to those whose childhoods were bereft of this wonderful biscuit. I like the website too by the way. I live near Belfast and we recently had a Christmas market featuring stalls from all over Europe, but most of my money went to the Breton cake stall. Apple buns, almond slices, chocolate tart, all wonderful. Sadly the market was only there for 3 weeks so I did not have time to eat every item on sale, so maybe I will have to go on holiday to Brittany like you did. Keep up the good work! Hilary Seidman
	Nicey replies: Hello Hilary, Yes I just about remember Milk and Honey's, amongst my earliest biscuit memories, I must have been about 3 or 4 years old. My Auntie Edna had some and they very different to the Crawfords Custard Creams which would have been my benchmark biscuit at the time. At the time she lived in a large old Essex weatherboard house called Clements Hall. I remember eating Milk and Honey's as we went to watch a bonfire in the very overgrown grounds of the place, all sat in a disused tram car that had been salvaged from Southend Piers's light railway. Apparently it's all gone now, I think it burnt down, and a leisure centre has been built there. Although it is part of our missing in action section I have heard tale that Milk and Honeys which like many Huntley and Palmer biscuits were produced under licence around the world, are still made in Malaysia. As for living near Belfast, the same can be said of Wifey's family. In fact Grandma Wifey's unrelenting one woman PR blitz on a poor unsuspecting Northern Ireland after our books publication could well be the reason that your Library has a copy.
Mrs Sarah Mint-Viscount Kimberley and Chocolate Kimberley Review	Dear Nicey (and Wifey, and NCOTAASD YMOS), As I listened to Today FM's Ray D'arcy Show this morning, I was getting very engrossed in the debate that raged - a debate on the nomenclature of that delicious little delicacy which is made by mixing Rice Krispies with melted chocolate, and dividing the mixture out into little paper cases to set. Now, the many NCOTAASD enthusiasts who don't live in Ireland can't have heard the show, so they won't know that the debate in question raged between those who insist that the perennial party favourite made from chocolate and Rice Krispies should be called Rice Krispie Cakes, and those who are adamant that they are, and always must, be called Rice Krispie Buns. Guest host Jenny Kelly was very calmly handling the situation, as well she might, for she is usually the producer of the Ray D'arcy show, and the show regularly broadcasts very important and controversial debates such as these. But calm as she was, there was no doubt that this debate was getting heated - the emails and texts sent in by listeners were becoming more terse and aggressive by the minute. Even without hearing this show, your NCOTAASD readers will readily understand how my enjoyment of this debate rose to all new levels, when none other than your good self was suddenly introduced to weigh in with your expert opinion. But I must say I was deeply surprised by the opinion you gave. Stating that you would call them Rice Krispie Cakes was bad enough, but to assert that you had never even heard of them being called Rice Krispie buns? It was almost too much to bear. And then, to my delight and relief, Jenny announced that the result of the poll was in, and that a resounding majority of the voters, well over 70%, agreed with me in calling them Rice Krispie Buns. Phew! I wasn't crazy after all. Now, the British and the Irish are usually in full agreement on the subject of Tea, Biscuits and Cakes (or Buns, as the case may be). We're both in favour of them. Lots of Them. Lots and lots of them. But as you had never even heard of Rice Krispie Buns being called buns, and as they are buns to the majority of listeners to one of Ireland's most popular radio shows, I can only conclude that here is an issue which divides these two islands more than the Irish Sea divides us, and perhaps even more than the Jacob's Kimberley divides us. In light of this, I wonder if we on the Emerald Isle deserve our to have our own icon on the NCOTAASD feedback section, as the French, Canadians and Aussies already do? After all we are the only nation to which you have ascribed a national gene allowing enjoyment of a particular biscuit (the aforementioned Kimberley). A little shamrock, perhaps, which would sit so nicely with the other icons, and make my heart swell with pride! Mrs Sarah Mint-Viscount
	Nicey replies: Well yes I came to much the same conclusions in the news item I posted after the interview. Anyhow you're right the time has come for a proper Ireland icon. I'm normally fairly reticent about dishing out icons based purely on geopolitical boundries but as you all seem to have this weird rice krispie bun thing going on over there in addition to Kimberleys I think you've finally earned it (its a pity you had to mention the others as protocol dictates that they need to go up too (Also the Welsh will be after me again (...oh you left out the Kiwis))).