Crock Tease is a recipe site for slow cookers, but it’s also something more. It’s also an invitation to take the time to stop and smell the roast.
The best things in life take a long time: back rubs, good scotch, relationships. In fact, the more decadent something is, the more it seems that the concept of slowness is essential to the enjoyment of it. Good sex takes time. Good food takes time.
And the better something is, whether you’re talking about your boyfriend’s kisses or your favorite flavor of truffle, the more you want to slow down and savor every delicious bit.
Why a Slow Cooker?
I often see people befuddled by the concept of slow cooking. “Why do you want it to take so long?” they ask. “Who wants to wait four hours for dinner?” I understand their confusion, because I used to feel the same way.
The life of a young, single woman is all about fast. We grab quick breakfasts on our way out the door. We spend our lunch breaks speeding to a department store to buy pantyhose for our after-work dinner date, then hurriedly scarf down a PowerBar on the elevator back up. We’ve learned to dress fast, work fast, and eat fast.
That used to be me. That is, until I got a slow cooker.
Old me used to want to bring a dish to the party. I would always swear I would, but then faced with the choice of cooking something or spending the same amount of time re-dyeing my hair and trying on 32 outfits, I’d always go with the latter.
The brilliance of the slow cooker is that you can dress for the party while a dish is cooking, and there’s not even any need to stir it or check on it. You can take a bubble bath, talk on the phone, pluck your eyebrows, or even pop down to the drugstore for a new lipstick.
You can’t do any of those things and make a stir fry, and you certainly can’t leave the house with an oven blazing while you roast potatoes.
Oprah once said that “You can have it all; you just can’t have it all at the same time.” Wise words, but I believe the slow cooker changes that, or at least brings us closer to having it all. You can arrive at a party in a conversation-stopping outfit, and bring the dish that everyone raves about.
You can work all day and come home to a hot meal that you prepared yourself. It’s like being two people.
Be prepared: women may start to envy and despise you, but that will only be until you bring them slow cooked homemade chicken soup when they have a flu or chocolate bread pudding to help them through a breakup.
My answer to the people who don’t get it? I tell them that I don’t have time not to slow cook.
