My new, life-changing crockpot; or why I will never cook on my stove again

I will not be saying anything new about crockpots most likely. But evangelists never win you over with their originality. No, no. We who are in the throes of an awakening rely more on good old-fashioned fervor and repetition.

NOW, TO THE POINT: I will never prepare another meal without my crockpot. Or, my Slow Cooker, as wikipedia insists on calling it. The slow cooker changed my life, and I do not doubt that it could change yours. I am going to try and tie a couple things together here and let them simmer to explain. (Too heavy handed with the metaphor there, sorry.)

First: Are you familiar with the concept of outsourcing your life from Timothy Ferris’s 4-Hour Work Week? I have not actually read this book, so please, if I get this wrong, do not tell Mr. Ferris. (And, also, you know how they say don't judge a book by it's cover? Yeah, well, in this case: don't judge a book by it's website... holy crap.) But, my blogged-out willful ignorance aside, I love this idea of delegating and hiring out for work that is not essential to you. Are you the only who can clean your house? No. Then outsource it. Cook your meals? No. Outsource it. Now, while there will be cries from the socialists among us, let’s leave that aside and focus on what Ferris is getting at. Make time in your day for the work that you and only you can do. Start that business, play with you kids, get to the gym, write that book, etc.

Combine the concept of outsourcing your meals with a love of 1970s technological utopianism and what do you get? Yes. The Slow Cooker.

Second, and still on the personal productivity kick: more often than not my desire to eat has nothing to do with a desire to cook. I realize this makes me sound like a whiny rich kid, but think about it this way: oftentimes what happens when your desire to eat does not coincide with your desire to cook is that you go out to eat. Very expensive. With the slow cooker, I can more economically separate out my cooking action with my eating action. Because, truthfully, they are very different actions. And because I am not in a cooking rhythm (often fast paced and distracted for me), I also enjoy eating more.

And third: the slow cooker is Pac-Man simple. There is one knob with three settings. For someone who doesn’t enjoy complexity in his daily activity, this is wonderful.

OK AND LASTLY: there is a sort of beauty to things cooked slowly over low heat. Letting a bunch of ingredients commingle for a long time gives me a sense that what comes out is truly transformed, a magic trick of sorts where you put in beans and spices and vegetables and whatever and you pull out something that is none of them. This gets away from the strictly demarcated meat, vegetable, and grain areas of my youth dinner table; and instead offers up this almost alchemical experience.