A smart new Crock-Pot

I am a novice when it comes to slow cookers. I didn't own one until recently, so I have to slavishly follow recipes (something I rarely do) if I want to make anything in one.

The first recipe I tried (for a chicken stew) instructed me to cook the chicken for the first hour on high and then reduce the temperature to low for the remainder of the stew's cooking time. This meant that for that first hour I was a captive and couldn't leave the house until I had turned the pot to low. Now, Rival (the company that came up with the name "crock-pot") has come out with a brand-new slow cooker called Smart-Set™.

The Smart-Set™ cooker has a dual-cycle timer that allows you to program in two cooking times and temperatures. It also has a temperature probe for meat so that you can set the pot to cook until the correct internal temperature has been reached (the temperatures for different types of meat have been pre-programmed into the system).