It’s adorable, but . . .

My hairstylist Enzo once chastised his parents for buying a slow cooker because, as he said, “You’re retired; you’re home all day. You can just cook whenever you want.” I do get his point, but I do love slow cookers. I’m a morning person, so I like doing all the prep before lunch and then having a lovely dinner waiting. I can make a bigger batch, and freeze a couple of portions for later. And as I’m only cooking for one these days, I only need a smaller unit.

So I ordered a Swan Retro Slow Cooker online (yes, I had tried to shop local, but the only ones I saw were six-litre monstrosities). It arrived this morning and I started unpacking it from its nice big box. It was the lid that was the first clue that I may have misjudged. Then I removed more and more packing material to unveil the cutsiest, teeniest, darlingist little cream coloured crockpot. Scout came through from the sitting room to see what the giggling was all about.

I’ve put the coffee mug on the counter for scale – that’s a normal-sized 400 gram can of tomatoes in there. I have no one to blame but myself; I guess I was too caught up in the cute retro look to read that it was called a “Compact Slow Cooker”, not small, or to see the words “1.5 litre capacity” right there in the description.

Here’s my dilemma – I really wanted to be able to do some batch freezing (as I do with my 3-litre unit at home), and I do think all it will take is one can of chickpeas and a can of tomatoes and this thing will be full. But it is adorable – I mean, just look at it. And maybe making smaller batches is okay. And I did watch that documentary on how much of returned Amazon items just go straight into landfill. Hmm.

Yeah, I’m keeping it – I owe it to the planet not to return it. Off to make Obi’s Moroccan Harira!