The directions on the cornstarch package said to boil it for a specific time, something very short if I remember correctly -- one minute or perhaps two. When it wasn't thick enough at that point I knew I either needed more cornstarch or I simply needed to boil all the water off. I thought I'd used the right amount of cornstarch per amount of liquid I had (though I was by no means certain), and since I know what too much cornstarch acts like ;-) I opted for trying to boil all the water off. Obviously that takes longer than I had! In retrospect it's clear I didn't have enough cornstarch.

I like the idea of using white wine. I wasn't too sanguine about mixing wine and lemon juice (otherwise I might've done it in the crock), but maybe in a recipe that has wine to begin with I'll mix the cornstarch with some more wine rather than with water, before pouring it into the hot liquid.

Hmm, tapioca. Interesting. (Yeah, I stole the link from your comment pre-edit.) Thanks for the info!

I go through periods of experimentation. Most of them involve baking and are delicious. This one, well... :-)

Sadly, I find that even WITHOUT the need to clean up, a well-chosen restaurant is faster and tastier and cheaper. I have this discussion with Persons Who Cook sometimes. Cooking is cheaper if you're good at it and you do it a lot, or you have multiple mouths to feed, or "restaurant" means a fancy place. If enough of those things aren't true spoilage and mistakes will dominate the curve. With the proliferation of cheap and fast ethnic restaurants around here, the savings even after the learning curve aren't sufficient for me to commit to the lifestyle change required to get me there. Restaurants will always cook tastier food than I will.

But hey, I can afford some wastage while pretending to learn something. :-)