Thanksgiving Menu Planning: Side Dish Superstars?

There's still a few weeks to get those Thanksgiving ducks in a row. On most tables, roast turkey is front and center, the holiday main attraction. But what's in the supporting cast?

Mashed potatoes, dressing/stuffing, yams, something green, all smothered in gravy. How can we forget the cranberry sauce?

Next week, I'm invited to a pre-Thanksgiving potluck at All Recipes headquarters and I've been marinating on what to bring to the party. One of those old-school dishes from my childhood keeps popping into my internal brainstorming sessions: Green Bean Casserole.

Go ahead and groan. It's such a throwback, swimming in cream of mushroom soup and topped with canned crispy onions. It's a million miles from fancy, but it does taste awfully good.

Still, what about a made from scratch version? Maybe I'll even incorporate a few wild mushrooms and use stronger-flavored shallots as a stand-in for the crunchy onion factor. And fresh green beans instead of canned. All baked in my beautiful Le Creuset casserole pan. Yeah, that's the ticket.

I'm going to experiment the next couple days and would love any suggestions!

-- Leslie Kelly

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Getting Fresh, With Herbs That is. The Afterword

I stopped in to check with the "herb lady" at my favorite outdoor market over the weekend. She is responsible for many of the herbs in our terrace garden this summer, and I love the enthusiasm she has for her work.

I thought I had been exposed to all of her herby delights, but no, there was yet another plant for me to discover. Bohnenkraut or savory, is new to me. You too? So I couldn't resist "Getting Fresh" one more time and talking herbs.

Bohnenkraut, (its direct translation is actually "bean herb"), is particularly popular right now in Germany because green beans are everywhere, and no one cooks them without their Bohnenkraut.

Apparently, the bright, fresh, peppery flavor of summer savory adds a whole new dimension to typically bland green beans. And winter savory works wonders with dried beans, I've heard, specifically in helping to reduce the "musical accompaniment" that is often part of the experience.

Have you been savoring savory this summer, or like me, are you discovering it for the first time?

--Tracy Schneider

Classic Stockpot

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A Simple Stand Hides a Garden of Delights

The sign read "Bohnen", and I couldn't resist stopping to pick up a bag of the freshly picked green beans. This simple stand, just a card table really, has been selling a small sampling of garden produce all summer long, strawberries, raspberries, and now green beans.

As I was paying for my Bohnen I noticed a perfect path behind the stand that led straight through the garden, and I couldn'thelp but ask to see this prodigious plot. It was narrow and deep and filled with beds of asparagus, strawberries, tomatoes, currants, squash, raspberries adn pumpkins. There were apples, grapes and quince. And those green beans.

I learned that the space had also at one time housed twenty rabbits, but over the years they became too much work--and ate as much as a cow. I can't imagine just how much work this perfect-looking garden requires. Clearly it is a labor of love.

--Tracy Schneider

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