Are you one of those people who have a slow cooker but have never used it?

If so, you're not alone. A recent study shows 83 percent of American households have a slow cooker, but only half of them have used it within the past month.

You can rest assured Stephanie O'Dea has used hers. In fact, saying the wife and mom uses her slow cooker all the time is an understatement. The California resident recently gave herself a challenge. She made a New Year's resolution to use hers every single day.

In October 2007, Mrs. O'Dea started working online for BlogHer Ads, which is a women's blogging community. In order to understand her job better, she figured she might as well start a blog.

"I liked the idea of pushing myself to write every day, and I thought a resolution would be a good way to do that," she says. "I discovered cooking blogs, which I hadn't realized existed. I liked the idea of that, but I don't really know how to cook. I really and truly only use my Crock-Pot, so it just kind of stemmed from there. I thought it would be a fun twist on a cooking blog."

The slow-cooking guru and author of the book "Make it fast, cook it slow," recently took time to talk with the News-Press about her slow-cooking obsession.

Did you use your slow cooker a lot before you made that resolution?

I did. It's pretty much the only way I could do a successful meal. I burn things in the oven and I wander away from the stove. I don't know what it is - I guess I'm just absent-minded or I'm constantly multi-tasking and I don't stay in the kitchen. So having the slow cooker is quite helpful.

Did you get a bit tired of eating a whole year's worth of Crock-Pot cooking?

No. Actually, it turned into a family project. Because I did side dishes and desserts and appetizers, it just kind of fit into our daily routine. Since I was able to do beverages and appetizers and branch out, we did have our fair share of frozen pizzas here and there and that kind of stuff.

Was it difficult to come up with all those recipes?

I have really nice readers. They send me dozens of recipes a day, so I have folders and folders on the computer of recipes that at some point I should sift through. A lot of what I did were traditional recipes - like shepherd's pie or chicken and dumplings - just traditional foods. I wanted to see if it would work in the Crock-Pot, so I did some figuring out and started playing around and was quite pleased with the results. We also happen to be a gluten-free family, so all the recipes that we were given I had to tweak them to work in the Crock-Pot and then tweak them to work with our family allergies.

What kind of tweaking did you have to do to make the recipes work?

We definitely had some mistakes, and I learned a lot. You usually need to modify the moisture ratio because the meat and the vegetables give off their own juice. In a traditional oven-baked recipe, you lose some of the moisture, and you really don't in slow cooking, so that needs to be modified. I tell people when they write to me that if they're OK with wasting ingredients to just give it a try. You don't know until you try. That was my idea going in that I would just give it a try.

What is one of the most unique recipes you did in the slow cooker?

I did crÃme brûlee and followed an oven recipe. I used the slow cooker and inserted an oven-safe dish. I had no idea what I was doing, but after awhile it firmed up. I figured out what the timing would be and made it a few more times and it worked. I had a lot of fun with that. I got really excited and e-mailed the "Rachel Ray" show. I probably wrote in all caps, 'YOU SHOULD HAVE ME ON. I DID THIS.' So they called and I was able to go. I definitely was not following proper Internet etiquette at the time.

So, is just about everything adaptable to a Crock-Pot?

No. I tried to do hard-boiled eggs and that didn't work. I tried to do bacon-wrapped scallops and that did not work. It was a disaster. I thought I could maybe use it as a food dehydrator and attempted to do a fruit roll-up and that was a horrible disaster. The book has 338 recipes in it and I used it for 366 days. So not all of them made it in.

With the holidays coming up, can slow cookers be used to alleviate some of the food prep stress?

You can prepare your side dishes that way. Last year, I lined the counter top with six or seven slow-cookers and then did roast the turkey in the oven. You can do a small turkey in a large slow cooker - we were having way too many people for that to work. But we did the mashed potatoes, two different kinds of stuffing and sweet potatoes, and the kitchen was all clean and empty and mopped by noon. We sat on the couch and enjoyed the guests that were arriving rather than stirring in the kitchen and that kind of thing. It really did free up a lot of time and relieve a lot of stress. And if you're going to someone's house, there are times when you feel uncomfortable because you need to pop it in their oven for 30 minutes and you don't know what the situation happens to be. But you can always find an extra outlet, even if you're plugging the thing in in the garage.

What do you think are some of the misconceptions people have about slow cookers?

I think a lot of people think the food tastes the same. I think in the past, traditional slow-cooker recipes it may have been because they relied on a package of onion soup or cans of cream of mushroom soup and that type of thing. So yes, if you use the same ingredients it will start to taste alike, but I was interested in exploring new flavors. We did an African peanut soup, which I would never have attempted without this challenge, and the flavors were fantastic. I learned about an Azorean stew which has cinnamon in it and other flavors which you wouldn't expect to have in a stew. And it's now a new family favorite. I definitely learned which spices work together and which don't, which kind of broke me out of my rut of, 'Sure, we'll put oregano in there, because why not, I know what that tastes like.'

Lifestyles reporter Tamara Clymer can be reached at tami.clymer@npgco.com.