MAREE’S MUSINGS

WORTH a TIN OF FISH

Well, it’s November already and another Martinborough Star to peruse with our morning coffee. My concerted effort to avoid any mention of current Covid issues (OOPS! snuck in) resulted in this month’s welcome diversion.

I eat a lot of fish. My pantry, a term derived from the French ‘pain’ meaning bread, (in fact I only have kitchen cupboards) always contains a few tins of seafood. One of my favourites is sardines. These come in dinky little 10cm by 5cm aluminium cans with a convenient pull-ring, packaged in a cellophane wrapper, which contains an absolute mine of information, as I discovered.

First, the brand name. ‘King Oscar – by special royal permission’. There’s even a photo of him sporting kindly eyes and a very fine moustache. Oscar II was king of Sweden and Norway, and in 1902, he allowed a leading canning firm to use his pic and blessing on their exported products.

Secondly, the contents. Oakwood-smoked brisling sardines in extra virgin olive oil, wild caught in the icy Atlantic Ocean. Hand packed and graded no less! Brisling chappies are a small variety of Sprattus sprattus and need pure freezing water to survive. Golly. I was relieved to learn both the ocean and the fishing meet global sustainability standards. The contents’ total weight is 45gm, of which 78% is sardines, and 21% oil plus a scattering of salt. Finally, a barcode and nutrition information table.

I work up an appetite reading all this and that’s before I even open the can, where I discover maybe eight or nine tiny fish, packed in like, well … sardines. They’re lying neatly cheek by tail, glistening and silent. Dead. It’s a tad fiddly fishing them out, but a small fork works, plus a teaspoon for the oil which is also delicious. Alternatively, a small meal can be rustled up including toast, avocado, cheese and a slathering of tomato sauce, but, whatever.

  Fish is an excellent brain food, I’m told. It certainly was a fascinating mental exercise contemplating my sardines’ journey from their birth, to their hopefully joyous life in the ocean before it ended abruptly with the catch. Thence from the boat to the factory, where they’re squeezed into cans, which are packed in boxes. These are trucked to ports, put into containers, and shipped across the world, unloaded, re-packed into smaller cartons, put on a truck, driven across NZ, delivered to the supermarkets and put on the shelves in the ‘canned fish’ aisle. And finally into my shopping bag and a stroll down my street.

Photo caption: My local shop charges about $3.20. Before writing this column, I baulked at the price which amounts to about $85 per kilo or 35 cents per sardine. But when you fish further into the sardine story, no way. Apart from the multiple steps above, there’s the aluminium production, the manufacture of the cans, the processing, the printing of the wrapper, and putting it all together. A tin of fish … worth the price!