What do you like to serve for dinner on the Wednesday evening before Thanksgiving?

We call it a fridge biopsy. The goal is to clear it out so we have room for all the thanksgiving food. Its like one of those food tv challenges and the goal is to use everything up. Dinner must be made based on what's in there. It's really fun because we are all cooks.

What we did this year was save and freeze half portions of various pasta dish leftovers that we brought home from our favorite Italian place over the course of a month. We had a nice assortment of leftovers from our stash. Also, I make a roast chicken on a Sunday for us to eat Sunday and Monday. I make a soup to freeze with the leftover roasted vegetables and then freeze the carcass. When we get back from our Thanksgiving trip I will pull out the soup and dig around for other leftovers.

I am late to the party but I am on team soup. Too much else going on usually and by soup I am not ashamed to say that packaged ramen or Campbell's tomato are viable options. Though this year I am bucking tradition and making it easier on me on Thursday so maybe an actual meal will happen Wednesday night?

Thanks, everyone. These are all great ideas. I ordered and picked up on Wednesday afternoon last year a half baked from our favorite pizza place, which doesn't deliver (Zachary's - totally worth any inconvenience). We're actually having two "shifts" of dinner this night-before-Thanksgiving, due to a late flight, so I think I'll do a combination - pizza for the early shift, with a pot of soup (a one-pot meal recipe) for the later shift.
This year, Wednesday-the-night-before is going to be even busier than usual, even with "extreme" advance planning, so I'll need all the help I can get.
Cheers, and enjoy your weekends, everyone. (I'll be making / freezing turkey stock and breakfast buns.) Oh, how I love November! ;o)

I suggest your lentil soup (!) or one that my mother used to make, along with a salad. Substantial and satisfying, and lentil soup always tastes best a few days after it's been made. Make it on Sunday and refrigerate, it should be fine. One year I served bagels with sable and chopped liver (both procured from a favorite deli) along with a huge salad. Casual to be sure, but everyone served up just what he or she wanted, there were not a lot of dishes to deal with and growling stomachs were quieted.

Take out Indian food and pizza.

We will also be doing chili & fixins this year- with an apple cake for dessert.

I am too busy preparing for the big day and get Chinese takeout often, sorry not much of an answer but there is so much going on to prepare I rely on delivery most of the time, I guess if I were preparing something for dinner I would make some soup and have soup and salad the day before. You could make any soup (your lentil and sausage comes to mind) freeze it and defrost on Wednesday.

Our son comes in a couple of days before Thanksgiving and because I'm cooking all day Wednesday, we have his and our favorite carry out pizza and salad for dinner . He can't find the same pizza in SF! The rest of the week that he's here it's left overs and some of his favorite dishes ( Dad's Favorite Seafood Stew and Greek Lamb Chops!)

I always do a hearty soup, a green salad and crusty bread. Soup is very freezable, both to make ahead and to freeze leftovers.

A big pan of baked pasta and a simple mixed salad Nothing too complicated, but it feeds the multitudes .

This is not the answer you are looking for but my family has a many generation tradition of trying out the pies on Wednesday evening. We don't eat dinner - just pie - sometime pot pies as well as sweet ones. Then we cook together on Thursday morning and eat the big meal in the evening.

My brother cooks. We have abalone that he drove for near half moon bay, steamed clams and crusty bread. It's actually my favorite dinner of the year. Not much help to you, but I like talking about it. :)

My daughter in law makes Thanksgiving dinner, and the night before, we all go to her parents' house for chili and fixings.

Take out pizza :-) Or take out whatever you'd like!! Have a break before the chaos begins.

I used to work in the call center for a local pizza chain - let me tell you, lots and lots of folks make a call for dinner the night before thanksgiving. At our house, tacos are the go to meals before the holidays - the meat or filling can be made ahead to time, and then you just need to do a quick dice of cilantro/jalapeno/onion, crumble some queso fresco, and heat up tortillas.