My Birthday Present!

My birthday is this week and my darling husband bought me my gift on Saturday. We had stopped into Costco in Issaquah on our way home from a family memorial service. We can never seem to go into Costco and buy just what we came for. We always wander around and look at everything and inevitably something jumps into our cart that we hadn't planned to buy.

Well, this time it was an expensive kitchen toy for me. :) I have killed so many blenders that just my presence on the blender aisle of your local store will set them all to trembling! You can hear their glass jars rattling on their bases when I'm near! :D I've even had to replace parts several times on my Bosch blender attachment! If you have a Bosch Universal with blender you know that those are decent blenders and yet, I've maimed mine repeatedly. :(

Because of this unnatural skill for blender killing I have been eyeballing a Vitamix for some time. I never thought I'd get one because they are very expensive and my husband, as sweet as he is, just didn't know why you'd want to spend that much on a blender!

Until he saw the guy in Costco drop entire apples, oranges and other big chunks of fruits and vegetables into that big bad boy!! He topped it all off with a mound of ice and let'er rip! Even I was amazed and I'd been ogling them for months!

I think the thing that sold him though was when the guy said it spun at 37,000 RPMs. When Jon realized it went faster than his favorite router the power hungry tool man in him rose to the surface and I got a fancy pants new blender for my birthday! Yay me!!!

We love smoothies at our house so it will be great for those alone. Add to that the fact that you can make soups, gravies and a bunch of other stuff right in the blender and I'm in love! And when I say soup, I mean start to finish put whole vegetables in the thing and it will actually cook it! You pour out of your pitcher and right into your bowl!

We love those JetTea smoothies you can get at the local coffee stand so the first thing I did was head straight for Cash n Carry for my own mix. We had Caramel Apple JetTea smoothies last night (and at $4 each at a stand we will pay for my Vitamix with those alone!)

Know what's even better? This morning I made my kids smoothies for breakfast. I'll tell you what they ate but don't tell them! :)

I put the following ingredients in:

10 oz crushed pineapple and juice (it was canned)

1 small banana

2 whole carrots (peel and all, scrubbed)

2 TBS whole flax seed

1/3 cup flaked oat groats (that would be old fashioned oatmeal)

1/3 cup 2% cottage cheese

2 TBS Davinci's coffee syrup - Raspberry flavor

Ice

When I was done grinding all of that up it was silky smooth and they drank it while exclaiming how good it was. I have a new tool in my quest to practice vegetable subterfuge. :D

This concoction has:

213 Calories

3.43 g fat

.43 sat. fat

.40 poly.

.39 mono.

1.49 chol.

109 sodium

294 potassium

40.5 carbs

5.26 fiber

7.02 protien

And oodles of vitamins and minerals.

My family teases me that I already put nuts, twigs, rocks and small woodland creatures in the bread I bake but now nothing is safe in my kitchen! :D

If you come over I'd be happy to make you a smoothie but I have a "don't ask, don't tell" policy on what's in there! :P

(Mine is just the like the one pictured but it's white. I could have ordered the black one with free shipping for the same price but I wanted the instant gratification.)

I'm off to the produce stand!