Ribs

Eastside Road, August 24, 2010—

DINNER CHEZ FRIENDS tonight; they'd asked us to dinner to meet their son, who has a coffee roasting company up in Washington State. (It looks interesting; I have to look into it.) This isn't just any friend, it's Mac, who walked across the Alps with me two summers ago. When you spend five weeks in intimate contact with someone, every waking hour, day after day, you develop a special relationship. In so many ways our backgrounds are so different, yet there's that bond.

One of the differences: He's basically midwestern (Iowa); I'm completely West Coast (Bay Area). This gets reflected in our meals, of course; I'd never have thought of preparing the spread set before me tonight — but I was happy to confront it. He'd grilled marinated pork ribs on his patio; a dozen or so ears of corn had been boiled. After canapés — olives, crackers, and three cheeses — that and Peach Melba was enough for a warm summer evening.

It was 104° when we turned onto his street, at 6:30 in the evening. Shoot, I said to myself, I brought a wine completely wrong for this weather — but in fact it was delicious:

Barbera, Louis Preston Vineyards (Dry Creek Valley), 2005