[DoodleBob]

I discovered the greatness of crock pots when we bought a half cow from our farmer, I could never understand why my chuck steak and stewing cubes were like eating shoe leather. Then I read that was because those cuts would be tough unless slow cooked.

I took a few packages of cubes, put them in the crock pot at 7am, put the crock on 8 hours of low heat cooking, and when I got home at 7pm I had the most awesome cube meal ever.

As I said elsewhere, I'm a guy. Give me meat, maybe salt or ketchup, and a head of lettuce and peppers and I'm a happy camper. Mrs DoodleBob is more refined.

[the OlLine Rebel]

My hubby and I also never understand adding all this stuff to a kitchen. We only have so much room. Cannot have all these specialist devices that don’t all have a place to stow.

Plus, crock pots as well as other faddish items are not easy to clean. Unless you get a super-special device that ensures the actual food-holding part is separable. They all are basically hand clean, and some are not thoughtful as far as how simple or heavy it is even for hand cleaning. If you want to use it all the time you’ll be washing it all the time, and it should be simple to clean.

Anyway that’s just my opinion. YMMV.