Total Blender, Part 2

In August I wrote about our super-blender.  Time for an update.

Its ability to make soups quickly without heating up the house as much as using the stove did improve our summer dinner routines.  The types of soups that we made exclusively with the blender was limiting, but my wife had no trouble adapting a few of her tomato-based soups so that most of the preparation was done with the blender and the stove was used only a few minutes^*.

The blender does grind grain well simply by putting in two cups of grain and running the blender on its highest speed (for the default 50 seconds the "speed up" key runs).  The result is finer than with our grain mill.

But it will not replace our grain mill.  Doing two cups at a time requires too much babysitting, compounded by the fact that the blender is so incredibly noisy at maximum speed that being anywhere near it is annoying^**. The grain mill is slower but its large hopper and quieter noise win the prize.  However, it is nice to have the blender as a backup for when we are out of flour mix but want to quickly throw together a loaf of bread dough before bedtime to ferment and rise overnight.

My wife and I have discovered we like vastly different fruits and vegetables in our raw juices.

I have found that I like filling the blender with spinach.  I like spinach, and eating more is a healthy idea.  I add half a cup of milk so it blends, and on top dump about half a cup of either frozen mango or frozen raspberries.  (For me, blueberries, banana, or apple do not combine well with spinach.  And those five exhaust the list of fruits we can affordably buy organic year-round.)

My wife makes her juices with cantaloupe, carrot, and then some fruit.  Surprisingly, I do like carrots and cantaloupe but have learned that I like to eat those flavors, not drink them.

Lastly, we're making more pancakes and waffles in the mornings.  But that is simply because we have a reliable blender.  A normal blender would help with those equally well.

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^* She uses the stove before blending to saute onions and garlic, and/or uses the stove after blending to bring the soup to a rolling boil for a few minutes so it will safely keep longer in the fridge.

^** We also had to explain what we were doing to the confused FAA personnel who knocked at our front door.