I should add that up until 4 or 5 years ago, I had never cooked except grilling --which I dislike. Too much tending.
>clean
I forgot to mention that there is a thin, aluminum, teflon-coated pot as a liner which easily lifts out to wash. BUT, since my system does not require attendance/attention and can be addressed whenever it's convenient, I tend to cook in batches and not wash the pot in between.
>sous vide
It was discovering sous vide in my quest for home-cooked RARE beef that originally got me into cooking. I did sous vide for about 4 years, cooking almost all meals except breakfast. It was sous vide that showed me that cooking could be done almost incidentally --without having to worry about cooking times. You can literally leave a rare beef roast in the water for 3 days and its still rare whenever you decide to take it out.
Sous vide was an important phase in my trek toward a Jetson's meal system. It showed me that we could [1] eliminate cleanup of pots & pans, and that meals could be [2] cooked without regard to length of cooking time. Those 2 factors go a LONG way in getting to hassle-free eating. The third step was the evolution of what I call "Mad-Scientist Cooking" --zero recipes.
