Slow cookers, spare time and an opportunity missed.(at least by some)

A slow cooker prepared meal should mean more spare time for you to get things done, so why are some people not taking advantage of it?

This is a special post for me on here seeing as how it is my first attempt at an opinion piece of sorts. Of course by offering a review of aproduct I have already been offering an opinion - my opinion, of something in the form of the review.(obviously) However this time around, I want to share my feelings on the subject of slow cookers as a time saving household appliance in general. I think that it is fair to say that everyone who is familiar with the concept of cooking with a slow cooker of any brand - regardless of whether it is a Rival Crock Pot brand slow cooker, a Sunbeam, Hamilton Beach or Proctor Silex brand of slow cooker, I think that most would agree that they all offer the same basic tenet or concept of convenient meal preparation for the user. This is pretty much a given; however what does not seem to be so obvious to some is the idea that your slow cooker is not some young infant that has to be babied. I don't really know why, but it seems that some slow cooker users - and again it is not something that is isolated to fans or loyal devotees of just one brand of appliance - are almost loathe to take the time that they are potentially saving by using their slow cooker in the first place, and putting it to good use somewhere else. Too many times i hear people discussing how they stayed home to be around while their slow cooker ... cooked. The idea of set it and forget it is aspecial one for slow cooking, and is one that should afford you the time to get other things done away from the home - if you do not have other household management obligations , such as young children or sickly or infirm adults to look after. If your attention is not going to be needed in the kitchen fior the next few hours, why not get yourself out and about to get some other things done? Or even get yourself outside, even if it is just to enjoy some decent weather, since that seems to be an activity that many of us do not seem to be able to follow habitually enough for our own physical and psychological well being. Maybe even just getting out and going down the street to a local park or similar green space, or going out to a movie or the local library or even going out for a coffee just to get away from your routine environment.


If you have a dinner entre that you are going to prepare in your Crock Pot, and it won't require much prep time for any needed side dishes, you have a lot of potential free time there when you think about it. To start with you have a meal that might take between four to six hours to complete cooking depending on whether you are using the low or high setting on your slow cooker appliance. Second, you might be using one of those new-fangled programmable slow cookers that lets you choose your start and end times for cooking which potentially gives you more time to work with. Finally, you might have a slow cooker that keeps itself on a warm setting for a set amount of time after it completes its cooking assignment which would then give you even more time to work with. Really, why would you want to waste this potential goldmine of spare time in your busy schedule? To me, this is even more of a no-brainer than the concept of lengthening the lifespan of the slow cooker or crockpot in your kitchen by maintaining it with the right choice of, say, Rival crock pot replacement parts if and when they are needed to keep it running smoothly.

Oh well, I guess some people just have a really difficult time grasping the concept of household freedom...