From Greig's it was back to Lisa's apartment in Rhinebeck. Lisa is clerking for a judge upstate this year, and I like to think of her apartment as my weekend country house, which I guess makes my apartment her pied-a-terre. Rhinebeck is a calculated blend of quaint country charm and trendy pretensions, and Lisa's apartment is a block from the center of town.

I've struggled with Lisa's kitchen for about a year now, and it'll be another year before I'm finally free of it. The electric stove has three burners; the corner of the range where the fourth burner should be constitutes the majority of the kitchen's counter space. Due to some quirks of electrical engineering which are apparently beyond me, the burners can only be used in certain combinations and at certain temperatures. There's no manual, but I've discovered some unacceptable combinations through simple trial and error, resulting in a few undercooked meals and at least one call to the landlord.

Lisa doesn't cook; that's why she's dating me. I like this, because cooking for her is one of my favorite things to do, I get to do a lot of it, and I always get a rave review (even when I screw up). However, every time I prepare a meal in her apartment, I have to buy a new piece of equipment. I'm not talking about food processors or mandolines or pressure cookers. I'm talking about sauté pans, stock pots, and kitchen knives. When I met her, her cookware consisted of three one-quart aluminum pots (with two lids), a cookie sheet, and a loaf pan. I covered the loaf pan with aluminum foil to braise osso bucco the first time I cooked for her. It came out great.

Lisa doesn't have a pie pan or a rolling pin, so these are on my list as I head up Route 9 to the Stop-and-Shop outside of town. (Rhinebeckers don't stand for the trappings of suburbia inside their storybook village. They're still protesting the CVS that set up shop on Market Street two years ago - but the parking lot is always full.) I also need a lemon, some allspice and nutmeg (cinnamon we've got already), and some fat for the pie dough. I'd have settled for Crisco, but I found lard in the meat case, and that was the end of that (more on lard tomorrow). Lisa has a five-pound bag of King Arthur flour in her pantry, so I check out and I'm on the way home to bake as many pies as I can before I have to leave town.

Back at Lisa's apartment, I unpack the groceries and head to the pantry. She has three different kinds of sugar, all sealed in ziploc bags, and the flour ... not in a ziploc bag. I already know what's going to happen when I open the bag - I should have known it before I went grocery shopping, but like I said yesterday, I was sure I had everything under control right up to this moment - SPIDERS!!! Not just flour beetles, but honest-to-god spiders, wriggling their little black legs around in the flour like they were making eight-winged snow angels. I've never seen spiders in flour before; maybe they went after the flour beetles which are, ominously, nowhere to be seen.

Baking pies is now out of the question. I could head back out to the Stop-and-Shop, but I have to leave soon, and I'd rather spend the time with Lisa. There will be no pies for her tonight. But at least she got a rolling pin and a pound of lard out of the deal.