I do like to cook, and am lucky that there are a lot of things my family will eat. Our biggest issue is dealing with assorted food allergies, which means almost everything is made from scratch. If I am going to be out & about, or busy in sewing room or garden, I use the slow cooker. When it is warm I use it on our enclosed porch to keep heat out of the kitchen.

But when I am home, I love simmering great pots of soup or chili on the stovetop in a cast iron dutch oven. Monday I made enough chili for 4 meals - 2 to eat, 2 to freeze. Tomorrow it will be ham & bean or split pea soup - we're still discussing. Again there will be 4 meals.
The ham bone is in the freezer from 2 weeks ago - we will have had a half dozen different ham meals since, baked ham & scalloped potatoes, grilled ham & baked sweet potato, Monte Cristo sandwiches, hot ham & cheese on buns (on our trip), fried ham with eggs, and today will be cubed ham & potatoes au gratin - all served with fruit & vegetables on the side. I know it may sound like a lot of sodium, but I have been very careful how I season the sides & serving sizes.

I must admit I am very tired of not being able to say "Let's call my sister/brother and meet at _____ for dinner.
Sue

Yes, I am quite the fan of my slow cooker. I use it for pork and chicken recipes, roasts, soups and beans. Although it takes longer, I love that I can "set it and forget it" and the results are always tender and flavorful.

I don't use a slow cooker. But I have a rice cooker with a porridge setting. I use my rice cooker to make porridge at night and we eat it in the morning. I use rolled oats, oat bran, steel cut oats, and multigrain cereal. It's basically 2 cups of anything mixed together with 5 and 1/2 cups of water. I think any grain combination would make wonderful porridge in the morning. I think I could put sunflower seeds and raisins too. I started to buy oat bran in bulk for my porridge. It makes the porridge milky white plus adds a lot of fiber but not so many calories. Oat bran plus rolled oats makes the whole grain. I add in some steel cut oats because they add some chewiness to the porridge.