Amarand Journal

Super, awesome, amazing blender--I lovedededes it so!

At 8:00 this morning, Sean finally got his midlife crisis Ferrari substitute:  a fire engine red Vita Mix blender!  After a week of not-so-patient waiting, FedEd left a beautiful, ginormous box on our doorstep.  Naturally, we had to unpack it immediately and then figure out how to use it.

First on the menu:  a green smoothie!  Since we picked up veggies from the CSA farmer yesterday, I had lots to choose from.  Our first smoothie consisted of a banana, an orange, a pear, some ice, some water, and a whole lot of kale.  It was…  Interesting.  Sean liked it a lot; I added some Truvia to mine and then it was much better.

In the interest of using this thing as much as humanly possible in one day, we got roughly a metric ton of produce (including a whole pineapple!) and came home to start blending stuff!  Next up was a smoothie with banana, chocolate protein powder, vanilla soy milk, and a handful of hazelnuts.  Heavenly…  I’m definitely doing that one again!  Then we did another concoction with banana (we’ve used lots of bananas today), part of a lemon, baby carrots, green grapes, cantaloupe, and part of an orange.  Oh!  And a dash of cinnamon (the recipe called for nutmeg, but I keep forgetting to buy it, so I improvised).  Also really good.  Sean did that one again later when a friend came over, but he added a stalk of celery to it.  Totally changed the taste with just one extra ingredient.  Here’s what it looked like pre-pouring:

The coup de grace came with dinner:  Pizza!  Yes, I used the blender to stir up my pizza crust.  I don’t know if there’s a special technique to this that I’m just not quite getting yet, but I think I prefer my bread machine for dough mixing.  The instructions said to mix the wet ingredients with the flour for 1 second.  Yes, I read it at least half a dozen times—1 second.  That was pretty much useless.  It did a decent job, but it required a lot more hands-on action than the bread machine.  At least the pizza tasted pretty good.  And Daniel ate soy pepperoni without even flinching!  I was amazed.  ☺

Today was “clean out the fridge and the pantry” day.  I think we’re about 90% of the way to a vegan kitchen.  My back is killing me now, but I feel really good about getting so much accomplished.  At least now I can feel pretty confident about what I’m cooking with.  And it’s so much easier to find stuff in the pantry!

After all this juice and smoothie making today, I’m beat.  Who would’ve thought that prepping fruits and veggies all day would make you so tired?