Is My Crock Pot the Easy Bake Oven I Never Had?

My childhood happened smack in the middle of the Easy Bake Oven era.  Actually, I don't know if that's true because I dont' have time to research when they first arrived on the scene, but I will imagine it was around the early 60s that they first hit the shelves.  By the late 80s, they weren't such a big deal.

Thus my theory that I was right in the middle of the Easy Bake Oven era.  The first one.  I know there has been a relaunch of the Easy Bake Oven because I bought the little cake packages for someone's niece a few years ago. 

Being ever so practical,  my mother would not let us even entertain the thought of an Easy Bake Oven.  I think her reasoning out loud was that we would want to use it upstairs and the electricity upstairs was not as modern as downstairs and we'd likely blow a fuse or actually burn the house down.  And that was probably all I needed to keep my wishes to myself, lest I be the one that actually burned down the house with my easy baking.

I know her reasoning to herself was that she would open up a can of worms which would never return to their can and would only result in endless begging to go buy more cake mix and lots of crying about who got to use it and she would have ended up with really fat kids.

So, we survived without easy baking anything.

If you've been asleep for a few  years, there's a resurgence of crock pot usage abounding on the internet these days.  All hail the mighty crock pot.  And everyone claims this ain't your mama's crock pot cooking.  People are making all kinds of things never before imagined in the crock pot.  They're setting it and forgetting it and having a feast of feasts by the time supper rolls around.

And the craze my family has hopped onto is  crock pot chicken.    You put the whole bird in, with nothing, and let it cook itself silly and have a fabulously cooked chicken ready for a multitude of meals.  There are those, like my father, who say that it's kind of dry.  I can't imagine how, given the way crock pots work.  I'm thrilled with the whole idea of it.

My favorite part is putting the chicken in mid afternoon and letting it cook until evening.  Then I take it out and let it cool and put it away for the next day.  When I get home the next day, I have a whole cooked chicken all chilled and ready to be made into something and I didn't have to get all raw chickeny before breakfast (a drawback to the usual crock pot meals- getting them ready in the morning means you have to smell onions and touch raw meat while in your pajamas and who wants to start their day that way?  I know, you can do it all the night before and put it in the refrigerator overnight, but that's a long time for the raw meat to breed its e.coli all over the vegetables.).

The last time we had crock pot chicken, my father poopooed the whole idea.  And he was supported by a few boys at the table who chortled right along with him at the wattage of a crock pot and its ability to "cook" food.  Because, apparently, the crock pot isn't much more than a lightbulb cooking our food, if we start looking at wattage.   Since I am not an electrician, I don't even know what to do with wattage except not to put a higher watt bulb into the light than recommended on the tag, so I have no idea.

I do know that Easy Bake Ovens are basically a lightbulb in an enclosed space that creates heat and eventually cooks. 

So, if I  make a chicken and veggies in the crock pot, I might as well bake brownies in an Easy Bake Oven?   If I reheat it all in the microwave does everything cancel out?

Now, can you help me help my sister?  She's a sewing aficionado who blog at Call Ajaire and  has recently been featured on Joann Fabric's youtube channel.  Click here and go check out her video for a simple way to make a belt for toddler pants. 
 
Linking here and here and here and here