Lizbeth, all of my Nescos are vintage so can't comment on the new ones. The porcelain interior can be a challenge to clean; soaking for a few hours or overnight makes it a lot easier to clean. About the only thing I use a large 18 qt one for is turkey and, for that, I use a roasting bag so no mess there. Anyway, I use the soak approach & a Brillo pad, if needed. With porcelain, you have to resign yourself to the fact that the cookwell will get chipped. All of mine have chips but only on the edges, not inside the cookwell. Youngest Nesco I have was born sometime in the '80's and purchased new. The others are garage sale finds, unknown vintage but obviously lots older than the '80's style. And, yes the cookwell is heavy duty & no, I'm not careful with them. All that said, if I was buying new & didn't have the birds, I would buy the non-stick.

Pfmastin, below is the link to Amazon's page for Nesco's. Which one did you buy? I have a question. My old crockpot has the "circular" elements in it and it never browned chicken. How does the roaster brown meat when the condensation drips down on it from the lid? Although most of the reviews are good, many say it's too hot on the outside & you can burn yourself. How does that help keep the kitchen cooler? I'd love to bake a chicken in there and have it crisp up! And is the 6 qt. big enough for a large chicken?

There's an Aldi's ad that starts this Thursday for the enameled cast iron that has several different items: 5 qt. dutch oven ....$29.99 Oval casserole w/lid 29.99 5 qt. braiser w/lid 29.99 12 in. fry pan, a roasting pan and an 11" grill pan for $17.99 each. These are all in red and would be great gifts if you haven't finished your shopping. jude

I am not proud to say that I've eaten most of the leftovers all by myself :-( I've received several emails from guests thanking me for the event, so that's nice. The cook-ahead workflow was very helpful. As were all of your ideas and encouragement. Thanks everyone! Headed off on vacation tomorrow. Going to spend a week in a Tahoe lakeside cabin with some good friends. We have a physicist, an accordion player, a Chinese guy who cooks, a standup comedian, a person who does hair and makeup for TV, etc. SWMBO and I are driving down with four kayaks (two folding), a bicycle, and a coffeemaker. The plan is to lounge, cook, eat and paddle for a week. I'll get up early and work in the mornings as usual, I'm bringing two laptops and a monitor to set up my work area. Then I'll quit work before lunchtime. I remember we spent two weeks in an apartment in Paris one fall. There I worked from about 5 pm to midnight every day. That was kind of disruptive to vacationing. But a few hours of work each morning is no problem! Especially when the lake is just 40 feet away. If we cook anything cool, I'll post a pic.