Pies!

Salut!
So today, instead of going to a museum, I spent the afternoon baking some Thanksgiving pies with an American friend, Leah, which we will eat tomorrow night at the Thanksgiving dinner the director of our program is hosting for us.  It won't be the same as being at home, but it's better than nothing!
But before we could bake, I still needed to buy the apples, so this morning I ventured all the way over to the 15th arrondissement to buy some apples at a marché (open-air street market), because Leah had read online about this really good apple farmer who sells her apples there on Wednesdays, and who is always willing to recommend the perfect apple for the recipe!  Especially since I'm not familiar with the different varieties of French apples, I though it would be good to talk to a local specialist, as it were!  And it was a really cool market: it ran the length of a street between two above-ground metro stations, so it was sort of covered on top by the elevated train tracks, but it was still very much an open-air type venue.  And French markets are always fun to walk around.  And then, at the end, I saw a stall selling yarn and they also had crochet hooks!  Which was great, because ever since I saw that pricey yarn shop on Saturday, I've been really wanting to crochet, and then on the way to the market this morning, the woman sitting next to me on the metro was crocheting, and so it was just perfect!  And the prices were very, very reasonable--five balls of yarn and a crochet hook for less than 8€!  So I've started working on a scarf, nothing very elaborate, but it's nice to be crocheting again.

Le marché de la Grenelle in the 15th arrondissement

Le nouveau verger, or the new orchard, where I bought some very lovely apples!  (Hint: it's the table with the red cloth and all the apples on top!)

Giant cheese at the market!

Mmm!  I snacked on the bits around the cores, and these are delicious!

As you can see from the tag, I bought rubinette apples, which

I'd never heard of, and which you can read about here.

Anyway, this afternoon Leah came over here and we spent a lovely three hours baking one pumpkin pie and one apple pie--the two Thanksgiving essentials!  They look good--of course we can't taste them until tomorrow--and I hope they turned out right!  It was a bit tricky, between the conversions to metric measurements, and slightly different ingredients and utensils than we're used to, so... well, tomorrow we'll know!  But if we can judge by appearance, I think they look pretty darn delicious!

The pumpkin goo always looks a little gross...

But not the finished product!  The little pastry additions were Leah's idea; we baked them separately with the extra crust.

Our finished products!