"I want a crock pot!" says the woman who's checking me out at the thrift store, eagerly. Later, I'm shopping for a slow cooking recipe book and am surprised to see five shelves in Powell's Books for Cooks devoted to the subject. "Do you have a slow cooker?" asks the clerk after I make my selection. I tell her I've just purchased one. "I need one, too!"

Today, it seems, everyone's into slow cooking. I head to my favorite gourmet market and there, next to the fabulously shiny stainless steel cookware and in front of the organic local produce is a sexy All-Clad slow cooker. I try to find a price tag, and when I can't, figure it's a sign from the heavens: stick with your thrift store purchase, sweetie. I have to go to the supermarket for a few things, and there's an end-of-aisle display of much lower-priced slow cookers.

When we set out to do a theme day around slow cooking, few of us even could define it. Now, we're all hooked, as Crock Pots bubble in our kitchens and beans bake for hours and hours at 300 degrees. For the record: slow cooking is any method of cookery that combines low heat and long periods of time, usually without requiring much attention. Often, slow-cooked meals are begun a day or two before they're meant to be eaten.

Why is slow cooking so popular, now, a good thirty-five years since it became vogue with the introduction of the Crock Pot? It's because it brings back the soul to cooking.

Slow cooking is about planning, and about following time-honored recipes for epic dishes. It's about learning something new; it's about putting real thought into your cooking. It's about not doing the same thing you do every Wednesday. Or coming up with a new dish for Wednesdays - one with a French name or East Indian accents.

Slow cooking comes from the farmhouses of France, the Medinas of Morocco, the villages of Central America. It's as old as clay ovens and dishes cooked for days, buried in the coals. It's a way of bringing the aromas of the ages into your kitchen.

As Lynn Alley says in The Gourmet Slow Cooker, "In our own kitchens, we have the opportunity to continue a long-standing tradition of creative one-pot meals, cooked in our own ceramic casserole. It may no longer be fueled by fire, but hopefully the ingredients are still prepared with care, concern, and the intent to nourish the body and give pleasure to the senses."

I couldn't have said it better myself. Not only is slow cooking delicious and enthralled with care, it's also economical and a good way to let little-used cuts of meat shine. How else to make use of those earthy heirloom carrots, that inscrutable bison stew meat? Cook it slow, in lots of fruity red wine, and just imagine what you can create. A dish scented with the centuries, a house scented with slow cooking. What could be better?