You're all aware of the culinary marvel that is the slow cooker, I'm sure.

For those who are not - it's a ceramic pot that sits on an electric element. As the name suggests, it's not for the man in a hurry, as it takes all day to do its slow-cooking thing. What I tend to do is make delicious stew in it - prep the night before, and switch on as I leave the house in the morning.

The very long cooking time means that even the cheapest cuts of meat become meltingly tender and there are fewer finer things than coming in from a long drag at the office to the aroma of gently simmering beef stew with pearl barley, leeks, onions, peppers ('capsicums' or 'bell peppers' to the colonials), swede, potato, tomatoes, etc.

Overall, it's one of the better contributions of the industrialised society to the quality of life around here.

So I did my usual Sunday evening chore - soften some onions, brown some braising steak, chop stuff up, toss into slow cooker, add herbs/salt/pepper/sweet paprika/L&P, leave note on fridge door saying SLOW COOKER.

We ate a grand meal on Monday evening the other week; Peter's Stew plus whole baby new potatoes and nice tender green broccoli. We didn't finish the stew, but I thought I would either freeze the remainder or take it to work for lunch.

That was 13 days ago.

Today, I looked in the slow cooker, thinking about making stew.

THE HORROR.

The sights! The smell!

It was furry. But not the usual grey-green furry, oh no.

This was brown furry.

And smelly. I decided that this couldn't go in the bin, to fester in the heat for the three days before the collection; it had to go down the toilet and be flushed as far away as possible as soon as possible.

Of course, it made a sound like someone vomiting, whilst smelling like the most unholy thing you can imagine, and looking brown and furry.

I can tell you now that it was a major triumph of willpower for me to hang on to lunch.

So, the moral is this: remember to clean up the slow cooker.