Guess what?!

OK, to be fair, unless you are a food nerd who reads a lot of foodie blogs, you might not be able to guess and/or be squealing the same way I did when the UPS man dropped this guy off last week.

On the right? Our old blender. The lean mean muscle machine on the left? My Our new VITAMIX!

Thanks to the fact that my birthday was last week (33! WOOT!) AND that Zak was finally bitten by the Vitamix bug AND a 20% Off coupon from Bed, Bath and Beyond that saved us a bundle, we bit the bullet and welcomed this majestic marvel into our appliance family a few short days ago.

*swoon*

If you’ve never heard of the Vitamix, it’s the blender to beat all blenders. With its two horsepower motor, (that doesn’t mean a whole lot to me, but it sure sounds impressive) it rips through whatever foodstuffs you put in there and liquefies your ingredients in a way that our old blender never could.

It’s a beast of a contraption and if you are health food nerd, this guy makes it that much easier to slurp down a much wider variety of produce when compared to the average blender.

To be honest, I’m just now learning about all the Vitamix can do. Based on the recommendation of a fellow Vitamix friend, I decided to take my typical green lemonade ingredients and make a green lemonade smoothie. I truly LOVE green juice with lemon, apples and ginger, but the juicer can be a big job in terms of clean up. The Vitamix is about 1,000 times easier to clean than the juicer, and the thought of making my beloved green lemonade without all the complicated clean up?

I am so there.

So here we go. Kale, cucumbers, a couple of apples, a couple of lemons and an inch or so of ginger plus some water. (It’s worth noting here that no water is needed in a juicer…)

And yeah, it definitely pureed my favorite juice ingredients. It pureed them into pond scum.

I half expected to see some hideous sea monster rise up out of the froth and latch onto my face.

(As a side note, notice the baby belly at the bottom of the pic there? Yeah, the bump is getting in the way of all sorts things these days. I’ve smacked Maxine in the head with it more times than I can count in the past month or so here. Sorry, Max. Sorry, Baby.)

But back to this pseudo green juice. Rest assured that I am no stranger to green drinks. Not much in the green juice/green smoothie department scares me. But this. THIS!

This scared me.

Be afraid.

The flavor was fine, but the texture? Not so much.

Looking back now, I either a.) put in too much kale, b.) put in too little water or c.) created a breeding ground for some mythical sea creature from the deep.

I drank the thick green slushie (and so did Zak!) without TOO much trouble, but I didn’t enjoy it the same way I do classic green lemonade from my Breville juicer.

In short, come We Have a Vitamix Day 2, I wasn’t taking any chances.

This time I took the more direct route to Green Smoothieville. That meant more fruit, more creamy stuff, less vegetables and most importantly, less kale.

Specifically, some frozen banana chunks, a scoop of almond butter, a 1/2 c or so of 2% greek yogurt, coconut milk and 3 small stalks of kale.

Let’s try this again.

Be hypnotized by the green vortex!

Much better. Oh oh OH so much better.

Much like spinach, when you don’t go OVERBOARD on the Loch Ness Greenness, the flavor of the green leafy stuff disappears into your drink. Kale is a little easier to notice than spinach, but this was still extremely drinkable.

And until now, any green smoothies made here were made from spinach to achieve it’s green color, largely because our blender wasn’t great at handling anything much tougher than those tender baby leaves. But now, the green possibilities are much more varied and possible. And as the crazy bok choy lady and Victoria Boutenko from Green Smoothie Revolution taught us, it’s important to rotate your greens!

My blog friend Lisa at Thrive Style just wrote a couple of fantastic posts on The Great Debate: Smoothies vs. Juices (with a Part II, including a bunch of great reasons to drink your fruits and veggies) that I highly recommend if you want to get in on the vegetable blending insanity.

(DO IT!)

The final word? I’m loving the Vitamix, but I’m not giving up my juicer. The Vitamix and the Breville get to be roomies in our appliance cupboard and will live happily ever after.

But as for the clean up,

(a little soap and water, presto, rinso, you’re done!)

The Vitamix takes the (birthday) cake.

WOOT!