I can't find what I want for sardines in Ohio.

What I want is non-premium-brand, not-Chinese sardines -- in mustard sauce. These brands can vary: Chicken of the Sea, Beach Cliff, and whatever the house brands of stores like Wal-Mart and Aldi are come to mind immediately. I adore these as a relatively inexpensive, healthy, and tasty shelf-stable snack -- not as luxury items. I will pay what I must, but I do not wish to spend very much money on them.

What I find instead are sardines in water, oil, and only rarely in tepid hot sauce. The more expensive or plainly-flavored they are, the more likely they are to be present.

The spots for all of the inexpensive sardines on the shelves are lacking, and the spots for every brand of mustard sardines are resolutely empty at every store I visit. The Kroger near my house has dozens of cans of reasonably-inexpensive sardines, but they're all in oil. The rest is picked clean like a covid-era toilet paper aisle.

It has been this way for months. It is not a hallucination, and I am not holding it wrong. I've been an avid consumer of mustard sardines for many decades. I am not vision-impaired. :)

Things are such that I take time to visit far-flung grocery stores when I travel regionally for work and also troll on Instacart looking for hits that will help me in the search of mustard sardines. It's been a nearly-complete non-starter; I've found only a couple of tins in the past few months.

[*]: As an unreferenced footnote, I'd like to preemptively note that I'm very particularly disinterested in hearing suggestions for other varieties of foods to eat instead. I am not in need of assistance, and this report of my own observations is not a request for help. There is nothing that can be added here that will change my proclivities on this matter, and there are no words that can magically restore mustard sardines to store shelves near me. I'd like to thank everyone in advance for understanding that neither my tastes for foods nor my regional market for sardines are things that can be controlled or adjusted by a comment on HN.