Also your best friend if you come home exhausted and not wanting to cook.  Prep it the night before, throw it in the morning of, and you've got dinner waiting for you when you get home.

Very dangerous.  Crock pots these days are all made in China. It doesn't matter if you buy the $10.00 Wal Mart crock pot or an expensive Cuisinart.  They are all junk made in China.  They can fail, over heat and burn your house down.

If you cook overnight be sure you have working smoke detectors. If you cook while at work make sure you don't have any pets locked in the house to die in the fire. 

If you are going to do this anyway you may want to put the crock pot on a large non flammable pan or a large baking sheet. Preferable on an island in the kitchen instead of a counter against the wall.

By the way, when you leave for work, unplug the toaster too.

Sorry folks for being a downer here. I worked 20 years in the fire and safety business.

Hi:

I make a point of buying my consumer products from democracies. I agree, the electronics and build quality tends to be better. (Long and bitter experience.) For example, among companies that make very high end as well as consumer products, the good stuff tends to be made in different places. B&W has their plants in the UK, and they make consumer stuff in China. Nikon and Canon produce their professional, high tolerance equipment in Japan, and have a second tier in Taiwan, with the non-critical low end stuff in China. VW may share technologies with Porsche but the plants in Europe produce different grades of components from South America.

This is why Sony got out of high-fi audio and now 'only' produces consumer grade stuff for the home market because Class A circuits are all high voltage, which means high current, which means big capacitors and transformers, which means weight. It's hard to make a buck on shipping heavy sound gear from China. This is why the super high end audio gear is still made in Europe and North America and it all weighs a lot.

Of course, we've never heard of shoddy workmanship in electronics from China, or food. Why every week there's some company apologizing for accidentally putting cadmium or lead into food and children's toys. Stuff produced in democracies is not immune to such problems, but the problems generally are less severe.


And, yes, my electronics are plugged into a powerbar with breaker, and my outlets have a high-speed breaker on them, plus the fuse.

A few years ago a buddy of mine got divorced after 30 years of marriage.  He hadn't cooked for himself since his college days (BBQ excepted).  Well, he discovered crock pot cooking and started inviting his friends over for dinner to show off his new skills.  Nobody had the heart to tell him everything he made tasted the same.  We decribed it as meat, vegetable, starch, spice or soup packet.  It didn't matter if it was pork, beef, or poultry, etc. It all was bland and a sort tan in color.    He also discovered the pressure cooker and it was no better. 

Of course, we've never heard of shoddy workmanship in electronics from China, or food. Why every week there's some company apologizing for accidentally putting cadmium or lead into food and children's toys. Stuff produced in democracies is not immune to such problems, but the problems generally are less severe.

Actually, when the "lead paint in Chinese toys" thing hit, I dug into the data a bit.  It turns out that lead was actually a bigger problem in toys made in the U.S. than in those made in China.  They just didn't hit the headlines as much because it's easier for news sources to cater to prejudices against "dem furriners".

China does tend to dominate the low end market, because they compete on price.  The Japanese did exactly the same thing a few decades ago - Hondas used to reliably rust through within a year or two.  Now they're among the best in the business.

Edit:  and I love my 300w halogen torchiere that Paleo Dude would probably hate!

Edit:  and I love my 300w halogen torchiere that Paleo Dude would probably hate!

I had one. But after I got my cataracts out it turned out I didn't need it anymore.

If you cook overnight be sure you have working smoke detectors.

Well that I can risk since we do have smoke detectors and our apartment is small enough that we'd probably (not definitely, but we sleep lightly) wake up just from something being on fire 20' away.

I can see the wisdom in not leaving it on when nobody's home.