Tacos with refried beans

 TACOS WITH REFRIED BEANS

I first learned how to make this dish from one of my roommates in graduate school, and have been enjoying it ever since.  It's one of those dishes where the ingredients are all pretty ordinary, and you can't imagine why anyone would recommend this to you, but it really is delicious! We generally have a couple of tortillas per person.

This also happens to be a great meal to serve when you don't know people's food avoidances—they can pick whatever they want to put in their tacos; you'd just want to have some corn tortillas available in case someone needs gluten-free.

flour tortillas (corn also work)
a can of vegetarian refried beans
chopped onions
chopped kalamata olives (or a small can of chopped olives, if you'd like to save time)
chopped tomatoes (unless I have garden tomatoes on hand, I use cherry tomatoes
shredded lettuce
salsa and/or Sriracha sauce

optional additions
diced avocado
shredded cheese
sour cream

Put the refried beans in a medium saucepan (preferably non-stick) and heat slowly, on a lot heat, until hot. Transfer to a serving bowl.

Put each ingredient in its own bowl and put out on the table.

Heat up the tortillas in the microwave (about 12 seconds per tortilla).  Or, you can heat them individually in a dry frying pan--very nice, but takes longer.

Put a tortilla on your plate, smear is with some refried beans, and then add whatever else you want of the other ingredients.