Year-Round Slow Cooker by Dina Cheney
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I love my slow cooker - I love my slow cooker so much, I have four of them, from a tiny, personal sized one to a huge one big enough to fit a turkey in. I have a lot of cook books from the 50's on to current, so I have a lot of recipes for it (though I tend to always make the same sorts of thing in my slow cooker, despite my recipes).

The book has lots of great, beautiful, well photographed recipes, divided up by the season so you can use local produce - more and more important these days, and something I'm good at only in the summer & fall, when my own garden is in full swing. There's an interesting, eclectic range of recipes here - unfortunately a lot of them I can't eat because of food allergies/issues, and a lot more include ingredients I've never heard of before. I live on a tight, tight budget - I can't afford to buy ingredients I've never heard of before, that I may or may not like, on a recipe I may or may not like. There's a few recipes that are left, however, that I will probably try to make.

Cheney also includes great how-tos and hints and tricks for those new to using their slow cooker. Unfortunately nothing new for me here, but like I said, I use my slow cooker all the time.

The other major draw back for me is rather short cooking times - I'm gone for a good 9.5 hours a day, I need to leave my slow cooker unattended for ten hours at a stretch. Her times are really short, and she does explain her reasoning, but that doesn't help me any.

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