This Thanksgiving, Say No to Green Beans

Green beans don’t deserve their place on the Thanksgiving menu, writes Juliet Lapidos. Holiday hosts likely include them as a concession to health in a three-pie feast, but "no matter your talents, they wind up limp or waxy-tough.” Worse, they fly in the face of what Thanksgiving cuisine should be: seasonal. Green beans are a warm-weather crop, old and withered by late November.

They're not even historically accurate—green beans start showing up on the Turkey-day menu long after the Pilgrims were gone. "My guess is that we've got the Campbell Soup Company to thank for the limp bean's promotion from occasional guest to bona fide Thanksgiving mainstay," writes Lapidos at Slate. (Specifically, the invention of the green bean casserole in 1955.) This year, ditch the beans and use kale or Brussels sprouts instead.
(More kale stories.)