If you made a three-ingredient stew of “bridal shower,” “1970s” and “cliche gift,” you’d dish out “Crock-Pot,” the original brand-name slow cooker. Popularity for the slow cooker waned in the 1980s — the newfangled microwave did that — but according to Consumer Reports, by 2013 a full 83 percent of American households owned a slow cooker and, furthermore, one in five families planned to use theirs in the following two weeks for something more than keeping the chili warm during the football game. And what’s nicer than coming home from the office on a wintry day to smell a house as a home, or on a sultry summer...
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