giving thanks to deliciousness!

thanksgiving this year has been an interesting one. first off, since i was just home a couple of weeks ago for cornhuskin' at MC, my family opted to come visit me. and by visit me, i mean the four of us have been living in my little 1-bedroom apartment in Fort Collins for since this past saturday. trust me, i love my family--a lot; however, we are definitely in tight quarters with my brother and me sleeping in the living room and my parents in my bed. nonetheless, it's been a great week...a good break from school and a better bonding experience.

with thanksgiving, obviously, there is also the cooking and the turkey. oh, and did i mention that we were in my apartment? it's fine...it worked out well enough...but i definitely don't have the space or the amenities like my parents' house does for cooking a thanksgiving dinner. oh, and another roadblock...we fixed everything on monday (the family flies out on thursday and i didn't want too many left-overs) only to find out at about 5pm (yeah...we're late turkey dinner-eaters) that the turkey was still frozen, too frozen to cook. so, there may have been a few stress-related tears shed, but we made it all work by eating a quick thanksgiving lunch on tuesday, and it was delicious. so delicious, in fact, that i felt it necessary to share our recipes and inspiration.

because we were cooking in my apartment, we decided to switch up our dinner a little bit. we had the staples--turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, rolls, and cranberry sauce--and a few new things--roasted brussels sprouts with grapes and broccoli and gruyere gratin; everything was delicious!

i thought i'd share a little bit of our thanksgiving dinner!

 I may be that weird girl who likes brussels sprouts, but our whole family loved these from real simple. they're super easy to make and likely delicious year-round.

 if you don't like gruyere cheese yet you should. this is the yummiest gratin i've ever had.

 black olives are a staple at our thanksgiving meals. our grandma never quite favored the way my brother and i would eat them off our fingers, but i mean...it was tradition. 

also in the background is some of the yummiest cranberry sauce i've ever had. i kind of used this recipe, but as per my usual tendencies, i didn't follow the directions exactly. i added a splash of OJ, about a quarter cup of blueberries, and cinnamon and nutmeg. YUM.

 yummy garlic smashed potatoes: mom makes these sans recipe, just with a little half&half, salt and pepper, parmesan, garlic, yum.

 another real simple recipe--mushroom and rosemary stuffing. we decided we'd take out one egg because it was a little too runny, but otherwise the mushrooms were deee-lish. this one will happen again.

 here's a little demonstration of the tight quarters. it worked...but it was tight.

and happy holidays from me (and the fam)! after dinner yesterday we did a brew tour at new belgium brewery (fat tire) in fort collins. there's more of that to come, but we actually got a good family pic! 

happy thanksgiving!