As mentioned, the GNOME Tweak Tool will allow you to let the file manager manage the desktop which will bring back icons and context menu to your desktop. As for a system applications menu, if you don't like using the Overview, you could install GNOME Shell Extensions to add functionality. Check out 3 Taskbar Options for GNOME 3.2. The first taskbar option shown includes mgse-menu
which is a pretty cool system menu.
There are a couple of other menu extensions available at extensions.gnome.org including an Applications menu and a Places menu.