Sardine Memories of My Grampa'

     Have I ever told you about my grampa'?  Today I was enjoying a sardine sandwich and, as always happens, it reminded me of my grampa'.  See, Grampa' l-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-v-e-d sardines like you cannot begin to imagine.  How do I know he loved sardines?  Because, for one thing, he ate them often.  And for another thing, the process he went through everytime he ate them was extremely involved.

     Picture it.  When Grampa' opened up a can of sardines, the first thing he did was to v-e-e-e-r-y carefully extract the little critters from the can.  I don't know if anyone else remembers, but sardines used to come whole in the can; head to tail.

     Grampa' would prepare the table ahead of time by setting out mayo, mustard, bread, salt, pepper and a cold glass of milk.  Then began the process, the very detailed process.  Remove the head.  Next, precisely slice the sardine in half, lengthwise, so as to expose the bones and lay them all aside.  Grampa' was not fond of sardine bones, even though they are soft and edible.

     I loved watching Grampa' prepare sardines.  You might think that he was now ready to create his sandwich.  Nope!  Before he could do that, he had to remove the skin.  Have you ever tried to remove skin from a sardine?  To say the least, it is not an easy thing to do.  It doesn't come off clean like an eggshell.  But apparently, Grampa' didn't care for skin, either, so he went through the painstaking efforts of taking every last piece of skin off.

     Finally, finally... Grampa' was ready to enjoy his masterpiece.  And enjoy it, he did.  This may sound like too much for a person to go through for one sandwich, but you know what?  It's one of the things that made my grampa' special and whenever I eat sardines, its just as though he were here with me.

     Until the next time, keep a hug on.

Yaya