I can't believe it's not batter

Oh dear more than a month without blogging. Where did January go? I'm still eating my selection pack!

Okay what can I tell ya... well last week, 12 years after I left Cockermouth school promising myself I'd never go back, I went back. The things I do for the love of the seas... Actually it was totally brilliant; the wonderful lovely super cool chick who is Head of Food Technology has kindly agreed to do some sustainable fish food tech lessons this year - what a legend. Ok so Vicky also happens to be one of my fellow inmates from Cockermouth School back in the days before the Eco Centre and the astro turf (I think? I didn't really play 'sports'...), when the only way to wear your tie was with the majority of it hidden out of sight inside your shirt and only the tiniest sliver of the thin end remaining on show, and when people thought it was funny to put cornflakes in other people's lockers. Who does that? I think it was like, a whole box!

So I went up to my old school, met one of my old school mates, and we sat talking about work like actual grown ups. Then as the current school kids came in to collect their bags or iPads or whatever, and called my mate 'Miss', it occured to me how old I must look to them. Then I made a passing remark about how leggings should not be allowed as part of school uniform, and realised how old I actually am. Then I wept at the passing of the years. Do you know, I always thought that by 30 my hair would be better.

Erm, I think this blog is supposed to be about fish... You say 'fish', I say 'chips'!

So last Tuesday, 'Seniors' in Lancashire was named Britain's best fish shop in the National Fish & Chip Awards 2012 (no I'm not making up these awards; they're real awards) and in the same week the Radio Cumbria breakfast show ran an item asking for the listeners' views on the best fish & chip shop in the county. Naturally folk were texting and emailing in to the show, naming their favourite chippy, and cries of  'the lightest batter!' and 'the fluffiest chips!' were resounding around Cumbria. All the while, a little voice in a little flat in Burneside bellowed out: 'Stramongate chip shop in Kendal is the best because they care about the oceans!'.

Yes I did bellow those words, and I also texted a slightly more literate version of them to the Radio Cumbria show, and yes Ian Timms did read it out (in a rather bored voice I might add; apparently I still haven't cracked the 'make sustainable interesting' egg). And when he finished reading my text there was a tumbleweed moment the likes of which I haven't felt since I last told my magic tractor joke, (it turned into a field....). Righty ho, just me then. So fluffy chips are higher up the agenda than the plight of the world's oceans? Seethe. What covers 70% of the Earth's surface? Hint: it's not potatoes.

Fact: there are 30 edible species of fish found around the British coast. Ok that's not a fact, I just made it up. But it's probably a non-awful estimation, I'll count them one day inbetween doing a sudoku and a jigsaw puzzle. Ok so picture your local chip shop menu - how many different kinds of fish are there? I'd wager three, at best. Fishcakes don't count; 'cakes' on the end implies no 'fish' at the start. 

What's ga'an on??

Well what it is, is a bit of a situation. Coley, pollack, whiting, hake... all good in batter. Some of the bigger flatfish - witch, flounder? Good in batter. Mullet... mmm gooooood in batter! Hells bells even mackerel is good in batter, as we know thanks to Hugh Curly-Whittingstall's 'mackerel bap' movement. Well this conundrum gives me bowel movement. Because it doesn't matter how delicious these other species are and how much cheaper they might be than cod and haddock (I'm not even mentioning sustainability! Yet...), we'll never go in to a chippy and ask for 'flounder and chips twice' without knowing exactly what we're going to get, and without anyone buying them, the chippies won't bother selling them. So we never get to try them. Catch. Twenty. Two.

The answer, I thought, was so obvious. That what we needed was a trail blazer! A chippy so brave, so passionate about the sustainability of our world, that they courageously take the plunge and expand their menus... *clasps hands together, eyes raised to the sky*.

Bryces Chippy in Wigton and Stramongate Chip Shop in Kendal: "Hellooooo?!"

So we've got them! Bryces and Stramongate have both introduced other species to their menu in an attempt to broaden our horizons and reduce the cod and haddock migration from the sea to our mouths.
How'd it go guys?
"Cumbrians don't want change".
Oh...

Oh dear so those trail-blazers courageously cast their nets a little wider and served up an alternative species or two and the customers didn't take the bait. How disheartening! Well, let's face it, Cumbrians are very savvy, and really there's no way that anyone is going to coax a fiver out of a Cumbrian's pocket in exchange for an unknown entity. Erm, I may not have mentioned this, ok I may have only mentioned this five times (today), but coley is cheaper than cod and tastes the same if not better when battered.If it's value for money you want, then cod is no friend of yours.

So Cumbrians, I need your help. Hell, the oceans need your help! Chip shops can't do it on their own, they need you behind them. Here's the deal: next time you see a sustainable option on your chippie's menu, in the not-quite words of Michael Jackson, Just Eat It.
And the world will be a better plaice.