Roasts are Good

The weekend before last I made a 2 pound (ish) beef roast in the slowcooker, and it was delicious.
I cut up the one and only Anna Swartz Hubbard Squash that my vines produced, and spread it over the bottom of the pot. I seared off the roast, and put it atop the squash. I mixed minced garlic (from a jar- saves time and money) Worcestershire sauce, a touch of liquid smoke, and some herbs (I think thyme and tarragon, but I forget) and spread them on the roast. Then I put 1/4 to 1/2 cup of water in the little glass measuring cup where I'd made the garlic mixture, along with another dash of Worcestershire, and poured it in the bottom with the squash. After 9 or 10 hours on low, a lovely fall-apart-tender roast! ... And some squash, which I didn't actually like, but I'm not a big squash fan.

Tex-Mex Leftovers Casserole

We had various leftovers (chicken, white rice, refried beans, and some mozzarella cheese that had been in the fridge for a while) that lent themselves to Tex-Mex, and just ran out of bread for my husband's lunch tomorrow, so I made him a casserole. If your leftovers are similarly conducive, here's my "recipe".
Put your rice in an appropriately sized casserole dish. Add spices (I used chili powder and granulated garlic) and as much liquid as you think you need to get the rice as moist as you like your casseroles to be (I used taco sauce, lemon juice, and a little water), and mix it up. Then I mixed in shredded chicken and mozzarella, and if you had a tomato on hand, you could chop it up and mix it in there too. Spread the refried beans over the top and sprinkled on a bit more cheese. Now my husband has a (hopefully delicious) lunch to pop in the oven