FRIDAY FARE: Thanksgiving Recipes - Green Beans and Wild Rice Stuffing

Because it's Thanksgiving next week, and I've been given the assignment to bring some green beans to the dinner, I've been looking for a new green bean recipe - and I found this one that looks yummy and sounds pretty healthy as well (I replaced the butter with olive oil)...

Green Bean and Mushroom Medley

Ingredients

• 1/2 pound fresh green beans, cut into 1-inch lengths
• 2 carrots, cut into thick strips
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 onion, sliced
• 1/2 pound fresh mushrooms, sliced
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
• 1/4 teaspoon white pepper

Directions

1. Place green beans and carrots in 1 inch of boiling water. Cover, and cook until tender but still firm. Drain.
2. Place olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Saute onions and mushrooms until almost tender. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer 3 minutes. Stir in green beans, carrots, salt, seasoned salt, garlic salt, and white pepper. Cover, and cook for 5 minutes over medium heat.

I think I'll try steaming the green beans and carrots instead of boiling them.

The members of my family do not like stuffing - one of the most traditional Thanksgiving dishes. Since I've never liked to stuff the turkey anyway (it seems to take all of the moisture out of the meat), it hasn't bothered me too much to forgo the stuffing (in fact, since I love it, I usually just make a small dish of Stove Top stuffing for me - I know... yuck, right?). A few years ago, I was assigned the stuffing to bring to a family dinner, and since my husband and boys wouldn't touch it, I thought I'd find something that could replace it. I made "stuffing" with wild rice instead of bread crumbs. I added apples and cranberries, and created a great side dish, that was much more healthy than traditional stuffing. If you'd like to try using rice this year, here are the ingredients. (I couldn't find a recipe that had everything I liked)...

Wild Rice Stuffing

(it would look something like this - without the carrots)

Ingredients

Wild Rice
Apples
Cranberries (I would probably use Craisins)
Pecans
Poultry Seasoning
Salt and Pepper to taste

You could also try adding other ingredients - like celery, sausage, mushrooms, etc.

Directions

1. Cook rice by directions on package. I usually cook rice in my rice cooker, and with this, it would be good to use chicken broth instead of water to cook the rice in.

2. Cut up the apples and other ingredients (celery and mushroom, if you add them). Saute them until tender in olive oil.

3. I think that baking everything together might make the rice too mushy, but, it would be nice to have all of the flavors mix together, so maybe adding the cooked rice to the fruits and veggies that were finished sauteing, and cooking it for a few minutes would do the trick! Don't forget to add the pecans and cranberries here, too!

Sorry about the "homemade" recipe. Hopefully it will all work out - with apples, cranberries, wild rice, mushrooms, and pecans, how could it NOT be good?!