Dinner down the hill

Eastside Road, Healdsburg, September 17, 2009—

DINNER DOWN THE HILL with the neighbors tonight, always a pleasure since they're fun and they can cook.

We ate outside, on the lawn, beginning at twilight with Haogen melon from Healdsburg's Love Farms, draped with prosciutto, with bats high overhead snapping up mosquitos, we hope. Delicious melon.

And then, now by candlelight, on to a vegetable sauté, peppers, squash, tomatoes, corn, potatoes, green beans, and who knows what else, with chorizo sliced in — the kind of dish you hunger for on a hot day, especially after two weeks on the road eating far too much meat. I could eat like this every day; certainly every summer day.

Rosé, Lubéron, "La Ferme Blanche," 2007; Sauvignon blanc, Frey Vineyards, 2007