Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down

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mbanu
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Joined: Fri May 03, 2019 3:45 pm

Tue Mar 16, 2021 11:49 am

I thought about putting this in the Tea Books thread, but it does not seem to meet the requirements, as it is a book primarily about tea-biscuits. It also doesn't quite fit in the tea recipes book thread, as it is a book about eating biscuits rather than making them. I keep coming back to it because it is the only book on this subject I have ever found, outlining, reviewing, and describing the various kinds of British tea-biscuits.

That the book was written at all is a bit of a quirk, as the people I guess would be most intrigued by a book on British tea-biscuits are foreigners (me) who don't have the same biscuit-access, while I imagine most Brits would consider a book on the subject as odd as an American writing a book contrasting and comparing Fruity Pebbles to Grape Nuts. So it is written kind of as a joke, which shows.

It started as an outgrowth of a website: http://www.nicecupofteaandasitdown.com

The website started in 2002 also as a joke, as far as I can tell, and was last updated in 2008. Still, quite educational. :)
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.m.
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Wed Mar 17, 2021 1:47 am

I must admit, their website is indeed quite amusing, I might even say it's quite more fun reading about english biscuits and teabags than about gongfu. :D
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mbanu
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Mon Feb 28, 2022 6:56 am

With the website turning 20, I thought it might be fun to give the book a closer look.



The first biscuit it goes into is Rich Tea, which it describes as providing, "the ground floor on which the rest of the biscuit tower block rests. Without it we would be directionless. With it we have a marker that says, 'Above me it just gets better and better, while below are animal feeds, Spanish holiday biscuits and special medical biscuits from chemists'.'" They mention that it is most popular with builders, and thus is associated with builders' tea. :D

A light biscuit for a rich tea does make sense, I suppose, (they are rich-tea biscuits, not rich tea-biscuits) although as a digestive-lover I found it a little puzzling. I did discover another reason recently however, which is that the packages seem to withstand drops and falls much better than digestive packets, not because of the packaging but because of the biscuits themselves. I haven't tested this formally, of course, although that sounds like the sort of test that the website would have loved back in the day. :)

I suspect that is why it is the biscuit of choice in biscuit-throwing competitions -- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/engl ... 790069.stm :lol:
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