"Cooking"

I am a big fan of my crock pot. And when I say "crock pot", I mean "crock pot" both in the colloquial all-encompassing term that is the same as "slow cooker" (much like "kleenex" = tissue and "jello" = fruit-flavored gelatin dessert) AND the specific brand of slow cooker that is, crock pot.

Crock pot. I love you, crock pot.

When I first got my crock pot, I ordered a couple of crock pot cookbooks off of Amazon. One, The Everything Slow Cooker Cookbook, has just rocked my world. Everything I've made out of it has been deelish. If you are in the market for a crock pot cookbook, I officially recommend this one!

The other one is Fix it and Forget it Cookbook: Feasting With Your Slow Cooker. This cookbook sucks The Ass. Now, the lame title should have immediately been a tip-off. I mean, what do they mean? Am I going to hunt antelope with my slow cooker by my side, gleefully tearing the warm moist flesh from the bones of the unfortunate antelope I take down? Because, you know, that's what I'm envisioning.

Anyway, this cookbook is awful. It's one of those cookbooks where all the recipes are contributed by "readers", in this case women from the rural midwest who name their dishes things like Barbara's Good Chicken and Dottie's Best Ham and Bean Bake. In a word, eww.

I would like to take this opportunity to clarify a few things for the "contributers" who "contributed" to this book, just so their "contribution" could be enhanced next time they care to "contribute".

1. A can of cream of mushroom soup AND a can of cream of celery soup is overkill for FOUR CHICKEN BREASTS.

2. Adding 1 tsp of soy sauce to a dish does NOT make it "Oriental". "Oriental" is a word used to describe a RUG.

3. Nice try, but adding 1 tsp of soy sauce to a dish doesn't make it "Asian", either.

4. Adding 1 tsp of ground peanuts or peanut butter to something does not make it "African".

5. It takes a helluva lot more than 1/4 tsp cumin to make a 3 lb chicken dish "spicy".

6. Pouring a bottle of storebought barbeque sauce over a package of cut-up chicken and turning on the crock pot does NOT equal a "recipe".

7. Neither does doing that with cream of mushroom soup.

8. Neither does doing that with Italian salad dressing.

9. Neither does doing that with cream of chicken soup.

10. Neither does doing that with an envelope of onion soup.

11. Fifteen seperate recipes cannot all be the "best".

12. It is the year 2005. No one knows what the fuck "salt pork" is. I don't, for chrissakes, and I'm from the sticks.

13. Nothing should contain an entire stick of butter. Nothing.

14. Grape jelly and a bottle of "chili" sauce does not become barbeque sauce when put into the crock pot.

15. Don't call it "Chicken At A Whim". In the first place, it's ON a whim. In the second place, 5 hours cooking time is far from a "whim".

And lastly, a question:

16. What kind of person cooks a rabbit in a crock pot?!?

Thank you, contributors.