Cleaning Up the Crockpot

Well, my crockpot has been on overdrive lately. First, there was the bushel of apples I got from our CSA. At least a third of which became applesauce or apple butter.

Then, I 'funcycled' [which is a contraction of 'fun' and 'recycled'] crayons. I went through the kidlet's crayon bucket and took every single broken crayon out of and striped the paper and put the various colors into my muffin molds in the crockpot. I'm not creative enough to have thought of this myself. Hop on over A Year of Slow Cooking and read how it should be done.

I did it in my silicone mini muffin cups and this was a slightly flawed idea. I think it would work well in good quality silicone but mine weren't. They worked okay but I had one rip in each batch. The cute part is that the crayons are a nice size for my kids little hands.

After a month of hard work my white porcelain crockpot was stained. I got the soap and scrubbed but nothing worked until I thought about how I clean my sink. I use Barkeeper's Friend.  Ah, this worked wonders. It removed the build up of sugar from the cooked apples and the spilled wax from the crayon projects. The only sad part was that I hadn't thought of this years earlier!! So, save yourself some time and elbow grease and just get some Barkeeper's Friend. It's amazing stuff. In fact, I'm not sure there's anything it can't do.