Tortilla Warfare

October 17, 1989: That was the night of the great Loma Prieta earthquake, an impressive 6.9 on the Richter scale. I was at my babysitter's house when it hit, maybe 45 minutes before my parents were due to pick me up. That earthquake collapsed an interstate and did some damage to the Oakland Bridge. Some people died, and some were injured. My family was unscathed. I think we lost a couple of glasses.

My babysitter --Marie -- and her family and I gathered with the rest of the neighborhood on the street, being jovial and convival, I think mostly because we had all lived and were pretty happy about it. We traded war stories, exactly where'd we'd been and what we'd been doing. I said I'd tried to duck under the dining room table, but Marie had grabbed me and shoved me into an open doorway instead. Some kid's dad had been in the bathroom, which was pretty funny stuff when you're under 12.

It got late, and dark, and my parents still hadn't come. Marie took me aside and said, "Don't worry. There's just a lot of traffic. I'm sure your parents are fine."

"I'm not worried," I said, because I wasn't. I was an emotionally pragmatic kid. I was worried about being kidnapped, and about giant bunnies amputating my limbs in the middle of the night. But if my parents were stuck in a little post-apocalyptic traffic, that was their problem. Marie shrugged. Then she handed me a warm flour tortilla, with refried beans spread inside -- standard fare at Marie's house.

It's a snack I've had plenty of times, before and after that day, but I've never quite been able to replicate the taste. The tortillas were always soft and pliable; the beans flavorful enough that I didn't crave any other additions. I am pretty sure Marie got her tortillas from a bag and the beans from a can, but the combination has never been quite the same for me.

Until today.

I have two things to thank: the first is Rosarita refried beans. For years I've been buying the non-fat kind, thinking that they were saving me from heart attacks and meaningless calories, but you know what? The difference between regular and non fat beans is...20 calories. 2o. Unless you figure that the difference is flavor is so great that non fat beans require about 120 calories worth of cheese, and possibly 60 calories worth of sour cream, meaning that it's actually calorically more beneficial to get the higher fat beans.

The other thing? This lady, who helped me make my own tortillas today. It's like my childhood, playing out over my tastebuds all over again.