cellini's Diaryland Diary

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Sardines

Yesterday I suddenly craved sardines. So I bought some.

I ate a tin of sardines for lunch with
a small foccacia today. I held a paper napkin over the metal lid as I peeled it back, preventing it from spattering my shirt with oil and fish bits as the lid popped off. The sardines were not in fact packed like sardines in their tin, which was disappointing. I wanted there to be more sardines in the tin.

Their heads and tails had already been cut off, so I would not be getting to know them particularly well. I used a pair of chopsticks to open each tiny, split body and pluck the spine out. These spines I discarded. Then I separated the filets of the sardines. I placed each piece on a torn hunk of foccacia and ate it all in chunks like that.

The sardines were oily and had yellow fat on their bellies. The rib bones stuck out like so many whiskers on a cat but I could not feel them in my mouth. They only melted away with the rest of the sardine's flesh and fat. It tasted soft and smooth.

I drank water in between bites and thought about how I would eat more sardines that night. I could eat them with a sliced tomato on top, or with capers and raw onion on points of toast along with half of a bottle of red wine that was opened the day before and left out on the counter all night.

2:36 p.m. - 2009-08-26

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