​Let's get real here for a second: This recipe is not for foodies. In case you haven't noticed, I have no idea how to cook. But you don't have to know how to boil water to experience the joy of coming home to a Crock® full of pork ready to be pulled and folded into faux BBQ pulled pork.

This recipe is for people who do not cook. This is for people who visit Domino's more often than their freezer. Because unlike every recipe you've ever seen made on TV, read in a magazine, or glazed over in a cookbook, this is something a person who's never cooked a meal in their life actually will/can cook. Why? Because it really is easy, it really is cheap, and it really will only take you 45 seconds to make.

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The Crocksman is a weekly Voracious column about you and your slow-cooker. It runs every Tuesday.

​Back in the day, my grandparents used to buy a cow (or two) a year. They divided the beef among their kids. So once a year my grandparents would come over with a chest full of T-bones, roasts, ground beef, and ... liver. When my brother and I chose universities in the eastern Washington/northern Idaho area, close to my grandparents, we were spoiled with more home-cooked meals than we had any right to. My grandma's greatest hits included:
-- Rib steak
-- Baby back ribs (boiled first, of course)
-- Chicken Divan
-- Beef stew

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The Crocksman is a weekly Voracious column about you and your slow-cooker. It runs every Tuesday.

​A couple weeks ago I wrote about losing my slow-cooked virginity with my college roommate, Bill. I haven't seen Bill in several years, which is a shame because we had some good times. Strangely, a few days after my column ran, I got a Facebook note from Bill, my first.

I sent him a link to the column and gave him a call over the weekend. He confirmed the accuracy of my account of the quality of that debut pork roast. It was the best Crock meal he's had, too. He also remembered how the nasty Crock just collected dust on the counter for a matter of weeks, too. But he asked me: Do you remember what happened the next time? I'd completely forgotten.

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Don Draper, right, Mad Men's Cocksman.

The Crocksman is a weekly Voracious column about you and your slow-cooker. It runs every Tuesday.

​As I mentioned in last week's column, I have a hard time getting TV hooked up at my house. I haven't paid more than $10 for cable in some time, and I keep a pair of rabbit ears on hand at all times. When the big digital switch came down, I got my discount voucher from the government and went down and bought me one of those converter boxes. It didn't help much. In fact, today when I hook it up, I get one channel of all-worship programming in Spanish. So I've given up on TV for now.

This really bums out my wife, who's a fan of all things HGTV and Food Network. But we struck a happy medium a couple months ago, and signed back up for Netflix. Pre-digital switch, I fell asleep to Seinfeld. For the last two months, I've been on the edge of my seat for Mad Men.

The central character is a guy named Don Draper, who has a Rolodex and rash that would put Tiger Woods to shame. Watching Draper come home to his wife and three kids after a roll in the hay with his daughter's schoolteacher can make me cringe. And sometimes it makes me feel a little guilty when Mrs. Draper is hitting him up to confess, like I'm not saying something.

Well, last week, I cheated.

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The Crocksman is a weekly Voracious column about you and your slow-cooker. It runs every Tuesday.

​The first meal in a Crock Pot® I ever prepared for myself was in a two-bedroom apartment I shared with my friend Bill in Moscow, Idaho. We weren't the cleanest dudes. We didn't always pay our bills on time. And for most of the two years we lived together, we didn't have cable. Or we didn't pay the bill. Or we paid the bill, had cable, but decided not to watch it.

What we did for television was we left the VHS tape of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in the VCR. If we felt like watching TV, we hit play. It worked. We weren't crazy about Lord of the Rings (At least by LOTR standards. I mean, we didn't buy any of the imitation rings and robes or anything.) But we were lazy.

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The Crocksman is a weekly Voracious column about you and your slow-cooker. It runs every Tuesday.

​Does anyone else remember that day in journalism school (Damn, I've outted myself. Copy editors hold your tongue!) when they explained that a Dumpster® isn't just any old large outdoor trash bin for dumping rancid meat, but a copyrighted brand that should be referred to in the upper case?

Well, I got a nice note from a representative of the Crock-Pot® brand last week to remind me that, like Dumpster®, not all slow cookers are created equal. Remember, if it doesn't say Crock-Pot®, it's not the real thing.

Much as I appreciated the kind note, I wish it had come a few days earlier. Could have used some solid advice when I was smelling a bag of days-old brisket wondering if I should toss it in the crock.

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The Crocksman is a weekly Voracious column that runs every Tuesday.

​Pop quiz: If you grow your own green beans but don't boil water, are you helping to fight childhood obesity?

In this week's issue of Newsweek, Michelle Obama writes about her war on big eaters, a project she's spent a considerable amount of time on since showing up in the White House vegetable garden, hoe in hand.

"We've heard the statistics -- how one third of all kids in this country are either overweight or obese," she writes. "This isn't something we can fix with a bill in Congress or an executive order from the president."

But it is something we can fix with a crock pot.

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After a large meal, Max, the assistant Crocksman, always needs a nap.

​Hats do not exist that fit my head. 10 gallon? Pa-sha! Make it 20. After adolescence, I haven't worn a hat. I sport a Vandal stocking cap when it's unbearably frigid (wish I'd worn one this morning), but as far as non-stretchable hats are concerned, I'm completely SOL. This is disappointing because I recently found a hat that I KNOW would have rounded out my wardrobe like nobody's business. Had it fit, of course.

I should clarify my wardrobe situation. I live in a one-bedroom/one-bath/one-closet apartment. Most of my T-shirts sport beer brands or various events sponsored by my current employer, or both. So, I guess I'm not allowed to use the word wardrobe to describe the well of cotton and wool that I pull from every morning. But I think that had that hat fit, I could have made reference to my wardrobe without irony.

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Beef Bourguignon, ready to cook. Slowly.

​Last weekend when I was driving around Kitsap County with my mom, she told me a story about her job at a local elementary school before I had a chance to tell her about my column, The Crocksman.

The other day she was saying goodbye to a class, and said something to the effect of, "I've gotta run home and make dinner for my husband!"

"WHAT!?!?!?" the class exclaimed. Turns out she was talking to an entire class that comes from households in which the dad cooks dinner. "My daddy uses the crock pot!" one student burst out.

In January, my wife and I relocated from West Bremerton to First Hill. And in the process, we swapped commutes. Whereas I used to get home 90 minutes after I left work to find a kitchen humming with the sounds and smells of dinner, today I'm more often the one left holding the bag. And like those dudes in South Kitsap, I find comfort in a crock pot.

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The Crocksman is a new weekly column about you and your crock pot. What you see here is 3.6 pounds of chuck roast, salt and peppered with carrots and about 16 ounces of Kona's Longboard Island Lager. It'll be ready in about 8 hours, perfect in 10.

​I had a little too much to drink on Friday. I know this for two reasons:

1. My cell phone tells me that I phoned my little brother Friday night. He lives in South Korea. It costs $3.50 a minute to call him from my cell. Every minute of that call was more expensive than the whiskey and (sorry) Diet Coke I was drinking all night.

2. I woke up Saturday morning half-surprised to find a fully-cooked pork roast in the crock pot.

No, it wasn't a blackout situation. Upon further review, I remember a few things: I remember that my wife was sound asleep when I got home. I also remember that the basin -- I have no idea what the technical name for it is, but it's the dish part of the crock pot that's big -- was in the drying rack in the sink underneath an assortment off pots an pans. The hell-raising crash that erupted when I retrieved the basin/bowl/thingy was more than enough to wake up the entire building. But, Saturday morning (ish), we had six delicious pounds of pork to get to work on.

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