I really like good, dry rosé. This summer has been full of it.

Today the high is 70F, which seems really low until you remember this is northern California and the general high has therefore been hovering around 75-78F for the past four months.

I remember sweating profusely for the first two weeks in my unairconditioned Chicago high school every year. Then we would have a thunderstorm and the temps would suddenly drop twenty degrees. That crash doesn't happen here.

Now that we live in a neighborhood, we have a neighbor who is so nice as to bring us pints of her homegrown cherry tomatoes. Someone will definitely be getting some tomato sauce in return.

Our own tomatoes are still running completely nuts. They are 6 feet tall and very eager to send out massive extra branches in all directions when I'm not looking. I have been pinching off suckers like mad. We're out of stakes; I actually had to splice a few together to make them tall enough. And since we live in California, it's ok that only three or four of the copious tomatoes are actually approaching ripeness. It's going to be warm enough for them until October at least.

I'm still edging toward cool-weather food. I baked a lemon yogurt cake the other day. It was this cake, but with lemon instead of lime and wheat flour instead of all-purpose and labneh plus a little splash of water instead of yogurt. I baked it in a bundt pan and ate it plain, with a big mug of chai. Later I had another piece with apricot jam.

True to form, however, we have not been able to finish the whole cake.

Of course, I also still have a bottle of this rosé waiting in the cabinet, and our wine store has at least a good four or five more. The high next week is supposed to rebound up to 78. All our little café wineglasses are clustered in the cabinet, ready.