A Year of Crockpotting

Some Web sites aren’t particularly pretty. They might even seem a little nutty, but exert a peculiar fascination just the same. A Year of Crockpotting—in which a woman named Stephanie, shown on the site hugging her crockpot and sporting a giant grin, offers slow-cooker recipes and a merciful lack of introspection—is just such a site. She took a vow to use her slow cooker every single day in 2008; as she says, she has “an unnatural obsession with [her] crockpot.” If, in these busy back-to-school, getting-cooler days of early fall, you need set-it-and-forget-it-type recipes—or just want to try New Orleans-style barbecue shrimp, a nicely simple-looking crockpot tomato soup (with lots of heavy cream, yum), orange chipotle ribs or crockpot haggis (OK, maybe not that one)—then check it out.