the rage of natto

That itty-bitty brown stuff that looks a bit like cute rabbit poo? It's actually edible and quite delicious. Natto to me, fermented soy bean to you and it tastes just like rabbit poo.

But I'm just lying. Because I can.

Oh yay, natto.

Once upon a time, there was natto just as there was tempe in the household. Natto, soft and sweet, gooey and sticky with a smattering of soy sauce tasted good on plain rice on the days when there was no chicken nuggets to fry for lunch. Tempe, hard and bland, fried to a crispy bar was a horror to swallow, a horror to digest and was banned from the household after it made an appearance underneath someone's bed as a molding, stinking mess.

It's strange how something rotten (read: fermented) can taste so good. A lot of people don't agree though. They say mean things about natto, the whole lot of them - which of course deserves a flying kick from me (with extra love, of course). They say that natto smells funny. (Oh yeah, as smelly as your grandma's underarm?) And they say that it just tastes bad. Like I said, it's rabbit's poo. Not everybody can stomach rabbit's poo.

But before we veer off the track, let me remind you that I'm lying again. It's fermented soy bean. Soy bean. Bean. Rabbit's poo.

(Ooh, "I solemnly swear that I'm up to no good".)

And being soy beans, it's healthy stuff. It has protein. Like how beef has protein. That is why I eat beef on non-natto days.

By the way, my youngest sister? On Mondays, my mum packs her a little lunch box of steamed white rice with a container of natto. No wonder she's so unpopular at school. Kids don't deserve this kind of treatment. They need chicken nuggets OK. Nuggets are the mainstream thing. Natto isn't.

And because I have a daily word limit, here ends my story on natto.