One of my favorite Thanksgiving traditions is to make at least one dish with homegrown food from our garden. Near the end of summer, I planted purple Brussels sprouts in the hopes that they would be ready for Thanksgiving, but I got the seedlings into the ground a bit late and the sprouts are still teensy tiny. Oh well! We luckily have lots of greens and herbs to harvest for the meal.

I planted in arugula in late August and it is now the perfect size for a fresh salad. The leaves are about the size of my palm, very tender and peppery without being overpowering.

I am thinking about using the arugula as a base for a salad that is studded with candied hazelnuts, blue cheese and chunks of heirloom apple. But my mom doesn’t love blue cheese, and since she and my dad are our guests this year, I am also considering making a super simple salad of just arugula, shaved parmesan, toasted walnuts and a lemon vinaigrette.

Incredibly the ‘Rainbow Lacinato’ kale that I planted in March is still going strong eight months later. This is a seriously amazing variety. It just keeps growing and growing and growing! The tall stalks recently tipped over, but were nearly five feet tall before they fell. Jon is a vegetarian, so I always like to make a special main dish for him to enjoy along with all of the vegetable based side dishes. Rather than serve stir fried or braised kale, which we eat on a weekly basis, I am going to make a savory tart stuffed with with roasted vegetables, narrow ribbons of kale, and gruyere cheese.

It may have been a bad year for tomatoes, but it was a great summer for onions. We harvested tons of ‘Walla Walla Sweey’ onions in late summer and I set aside the biggest ones to use for Thanksgiving. They will find their way into our cornbread dressing, the tart mentioned above, and I’m sure other dishes as well.

In my Seattle garden I had a huge ‘Berggarten’ sage plant. I was very sorry to leave it when we moved because it was so beautiful and produced an endless supply of leaves that are perfect for cooking with. I planted a new ‘Berggarten’ sage in my Portland garden, but it is seriously unhappy in the spot I chose. The chickens dug it up on more than one occasion this summer and the soil doesn’t drain well. Even though the plant is pouting, there are still enough leaves to make Mark Bittman’s prosciutto wrapped sweet potatoes!

I am so excited to cook for Thanksgiving and share the meal with my parents and our good friends. I’m putting the finishing touches on the menu this week and am curious what will be on your table next week that comes from your garden?

The results are in and my mom selected Trish to win Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln’s Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities and Wicked Bugs: The Louse That Conquered Napoleon and Other Diabolical Insects! Here is her winning submission.

The neighbor’s back field was “our” saving-us-from-boredom play field growing up. One day my older sister, about 12 years of age, decided to lay down in the long-bladed grass to fiddle with some sort of stick. As I watched her lay her head down in the soft bed of grass – I let out a terrifying scream – she screamed even louder! Not knowing what I screamed about but knowing it had to be bad, she jolted up screaming more and more and jumping up and down slapping whatever it was off her! What I saw was at least 10 to 15 black field spiders drop down over her head into her face, bobbing up and down. It happened in an instant but I’ll never, ever forget the terror we both felt! Funny thing, however, to this day she does not remember that spider episode in our days in the field. (I think she went unconcious for those few terriorizing moments!) Creepy for sure!

Thanks to everyone who contributed their spooky garden stories! They were all fun to read and my mom reports that she had a very hard time choosing.

Just in time for the first frost in my garden, Anne Bryant sent me her adorable calendar for November! I would love to have some hand-knit mittens to wear when I am raking leaves out in the chilly fall garden. Knitting seems to share a thread with vegetable gardening, because it is a meditative craft that produces something lovely and useful in the end.

I’ve got the calendar on my desktop and I hope that looking at this next month inspires me to work on some cozy crafts indoors.

To put November’s calendar on your computer’s desktop, all you need to do is choose the size that best fits your monitor and then click on the link below—the file will automatically download to your computer and then you can set it up as your background image.

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I hope you all have a wonderful month filled with good food and friends, especially over the Thanksgiving holiday!