Sataw beans, also known as "stink beans" are wildly popular in the cuisine of southern Thailand - but nowhere else.

Found some in the frozen food section of my friendly Asian market, right near the banana leaves. Cooked 'em up with chicken and chilis in accordance with a recipe found in one of my Thai cookbooks.

Weird enough, but I kept thinkng, "I know this taste, I know this taste, what the hell is this taste?".

Then, from the long forgotten past it bubbled up - rubber cement! Not just any rubber cement but the special rubber cement that came with patch kits for inner tubes from before tubeless tires (yeah, I know you young 'uns didn't even know your car rides on "tubeless" tires having known no other kind).

I haven't tasted that smell for many, many years - the chemicals in those little squeeze tubes are doubtless now banned by the EPA, the DEA (definitely), the FCC, the SEC and every agency in between.

These beans must have more benzine rings than Van Waters & Rogers (VWR now Vopak). I found a Thai scientific study on the Internet, though, that seemed surprised that sataw beans were negative for the unusually high incidence of esophagal and oral cancers in southern Thailand. Other beans were implicated.

Reminds me of the Perrier Water scandal of some years back. Billionth part traces of benzine were found in some bottlings and the yuppies switched to Evian. A bottle of Perrier probably contained less than 1/10,000 the benzine in the raw mushrooms of a typical yuppie "health salad".

Anyone who describes humans as "rational" is living proof of the disproof thereof.