Meet my new...

...Crock Pot. Isn't she pretty?

My last honest-to-goodness Crock Pot was a wedding gift. One of the real dinosaurs where the crock didn't even come out of the pot. I hardly ever used it, because washing it was such a pain. This one separates...so much easier to wash! And I love that after the set cooking time is over, it automatically switches to a keep-warm setting.

My late slow cooker--which I've used a LOT over the past fifteen years or so--was not a Crock Pot, but was actually a metal non-stick cook pot which sat atop an electric griddle sort of arrangement. It served me very well. Its downside was that certain dishes got overdone on the bottom (because that's where the heat source was instead of surrounding the sides as well). The upside was that the pot being metal meant that I could brown the meat on the stove top right in it before just moving it from the stove top to the griddle for the slow-cook part of the process. It works still. It is just missing in action. I'm embarrassed to say that it (like a lot of things) is still packed in a box somewhere in the garage.

I decided that I could have a new one, and donate the old one.

When I find it, that is.