Single serving crock pot is (to me) otherwise known as the queso pot!

Get a bag of tortilla chips

Throw a block of velveeta in the pot and cover it with Ro-Tel

Turn it on and get all melty

Stir until combined

Open your bag of chips and put yourself into a cheese-coma.

Zero-effort french dip:

1. Buy an arm roast at the grocery store the night before, sleep.
2. Wake up, dump in arm roast, a can of french onion soup, top off with water or beef stock
3. Cover and set to Low, then go to work for the day
4. Return home in the evening, shred meat with some forks, serve on buns with cheese of your choice

It’s not glamorous, and you could do a lot better with more intelligent ingredient choice and more prep (searing the roast first, adding veg, doing the broth from scratch, etc). But the result-to-effort ratio of the bare minimum is unmatched if you’re ever in a “fuck it, guyslop night” kinda mood.

For slightly more effort, I sometimes make a very simple hot apple cider recipe. That’s non-alcoholic for all the non-Americans, though you can always spike it with your spirit of choice:

For every 8 cups (~1.8L, 2L is probably fine) of apple juice from concentrate, add:

• 1 tsp whole cloves
• 1 tsp whole allspice
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 1/3 cup packed (~70g) light brown sugar
• 1 large orange, sliced

Cook on low for 2 hours, fish out solids, serve hot.

If you can specifically find “honeycrisp” apple cider at the grocery store to use as your base, it’s even better. I can sometimes find it seasonally at Walmart.