The microwave can be used to partially defrost a block-hard frozen piece of chicken or beef so it can be patted dry with a paper towel and braised in hot oil with garlic and pepper. Then you pour in some diluted red vinegar or wine, cover, and braise until it's cooked through, no more.

Slow cookers make good stews. You put the meat in there with the contents of a jar of tomato sauce, any kind, and carrots, onion, potato, carrot, celery, if you have. Whatever you have. Some rinsed dried beans will be fine, the whole bag from Goya. Rinse in a mesh strainer.

A few shakes of garlic powder will give it character.

Add water to a thumb-knuckle from the rim, cover, and go to work. When you come home, it's a stew. Even though the meat was frozen solid that morning when you put it in. This is for people who will be out all day. OR, put it up before GOING TO BED. In the morning, it will be stew.

An electric rice cooker, and you are on your way.

Do NOT open the slow cooker after it has started, and do NOT add anything to the slow cooker that has not been BOILED. If you need more water in there, BOIL it. It's warm and wet in there; you don't want to culture any bad bacteria.

Some people like the kind of slow cooker that turns itself down from high to low, after four hours on high. That is called a smart pot. That feature can be convenient.

Put the slow cooker on a table all by itself with nothing near it, and don't use an extension cord. Keep kids away from it. A heat proof table surface is nice. Perhaps a piece of glass, metal stick-on tiles, mirror, marble.

Read and save the directions for all appliances in a plastic envelope.