Cooking overload, and hey - my dinner's cool!

Tuesday was kind of weird. I defrosted some beef mince to make chilli, and some blade steak to make the beef casserole for the next day's slow cooker. Then I realised that I had twice as much mince as I needed - it couldn't go back in the freezer, so I made it into meatballs . I browned the meat for the casserole, and chucked the meatballs in the oven (with the baked potatoes for the chilli).
For somebody who normally only eats one or two meals of red meat a week, it felt strange to be cooking up three or four meals of the stuff all at once!
Eventually, the meatballs went in the freezer to be flash frozen, the casserole went in the fridge for the next day, and the chilli got eaten. I was left feeling like the picture of a domestic goddess.

The beef casserole turned out brilliantly. I used the 'Wine-braised beef with herby dumplings' from Destitute Gourmet, but I had to modify the recipe for the slow cooker. I thought that meant using less liquid (the instruction manual said to halve it) but I won't next time, because it wasn't runny enough to do dumplings. It was perfect though - thick and rich and beefy. I served it with some lovely green beans. And to top it all off, CookieCrumb says casseroles are so retro that they are cool again!