Tonight I had a big score. It was Friday night. I had dinner with my friend Kris at the Steakhouse-fish burgers. They were good, but not nearly filling enough. We both decided not to go drinking, but instead to go shopping at Lyn Netzler's.

I was looking in the aisle of canned goods. Down at the bottom were stacked a dozen or so enormous cans. I looked through them out of curiosity and right in the middle I found a can of "Ranch Style" black beans from Texas. I couldn't believe my luck.

I have been looking for black beans everywhere. They were some salted, dried things from China, but they looked inedible, so when I found the can, I was thrilled. I did feel a little guilty that there was only one can and Kris couldn't have one as well, but only a little.

I also hesitated from a second over the 22 tala price tag (over 7 bucks), but I decided I had to have them--I would have probably paid twice that price-and bought them along with some tortillas from Santa Clara and some milk from New Zealand.