Crock Pots are Messy

Not sure if slow cookers are making a resurgence or not... I see a lot of recipes around for them. I don't really use mine much because I just end up using my enameled cast iron on a very low flame, which seems to do the trick. I'm generally home, so I don't need the whole cooking-while-away thing. But I love slow cookers, I do. They are awesome. I never really thought about the mess, because, well, that's part of cooking and cleaning up afterwards. The crock pot can be a little unwieldy, but whatever. You soak it, you scrub it, life goes on.

Nope.

Save yourself from messy cleanup by using these disposable liners, which fit models up to 6.5 quarts. Liners can go from refrigerator to slow cooker. Each liner measures 11" X 20". Package of 8 liners.

Let us put aside, for a moment, the horrific image of sea turtles and other sea creatures mistaking these bags floating in their environment as jellyfish, their natural food, and then them choking on it and dying a slow horrible death. Let's just put that aside. Let's ignore that, so that you can have a nice easy clean-up. How about instead we just think of all the plastic-y goodness and chemical soup you are adding to your food that you are feeding to your precious children. Because how are you NOT leaching chemicals into your food which is in direct contact with slowly heated plastic? Do you even know that NO ONE but the plastic manufacturers even knows what is actually IN the plastic? Remember BPA? Remember before BPA? I do. Do you honestly think that if there is no BPA in your plastic, that there is nothing else harmful in there? You are stirring that ALL INTO your food and right into your kids it goes. And we wonder why kids have cancer and other health issues.

I found this image particularly *amusing* when I noticed the page from whence it came. I was amused for quite a few reasons. Let's share, shall we? The page was a blog that was all about a full year of slow-cooking recipes, no repeats. I'm sure she's a lovely woman. She got media appearances and wrote a cookbook out of the whole experience, bless her lil' heart! Here's what tickles me to no end: If she used liners, that is 365 more bags in the trash (not recyclable) and 365 times all the people that took her word for using them also in the oceans. Isn't that hysterical? Also, the cute pictures of what I'm guessing are her kids on the Crock Pot. So she can see their shiny happy faces every time she stirs, right before she spoon-feeds petrochemicals into their sweet gullets. Amusing? Ironic? Meh. Was she using Styrofoam plates and bowls and plastic forks and spoons, too?

We're going to "lazy" and "convenience" ourselves right out of existence. I'd say mark my words, but we won't be here anymore so...

Carry on.