At Thanksgiving, there are a lot of you-can't-not-haves.

You can't not have turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie. Most families have a couple of other can't-not-haves, such as tiny Le Seur peas, fried onion-and-green bean casserole, candied yams with little marshmallows, maybe another flavor of pie. And in Hawai'i, there better be steamed rice for the gravy.

Which means that a home cook who wants to get creative has one choice: the side dishes.

And, given that most of us have but one oven — in which a very large bird will soon take up residence — the options grow yet narrower.

Today, we offer a half-dozen seasonal sides, most of which can be prepped a day or two in advance and finished off during the half hour when the turkey is "resting" after its roasting labors.

A word about "resting": The current recommendation by the editors of Cook's Illustrated is that the turkey be removed to the carving board and allowed to sit for half an hour. This sounds like a lot of time, but the meat's internal temperature actually continues to rise for a time after cooking, so meat will still be hot at carving time. And it will be moist, because the juices that have bubbled to the surface during cooking will have had a chance to be reabsorbed by the tissues, rather than bleeding out the moment the carving knife touches the skin. Cook's Illustrated reported that "rested" turkeys weighed 2 percent to 3 percent more than those carved right away.

This translates into a bit of "resting time" for the cook, too, reducing the frenzied chaos that generally characterizes the moments before we come to the table — with gravy-making, potato-mashing and vegetable prepping all occurring in a blur because Mom is so worried about the bird getting cold.

Reach Wanda A. Adams at wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com.