I embarked on this quest on Sunday night… Frustrated that the wedge smoothie bar was closed and that I knew of no ther place to get a smoothie on short notice, I thought “I’ll just make one! How hard can it be?”
I went to walmart with Jason (the 24 hour one on Hennepin next to kowalski’s), and bought a blender for 22.99 (or something like that).
Having already surfed the Internet, I had my first recipe in mind, so I bought some frozen strawberries, and a container of lemon juice.
Unfortunately, Colleen was fast asleep by the time I returned home, so I didn’t end up making the smoothie until Monday night, last night. The recipe was as follows: a spoonful of lemon juice, ten frozen strawberries, and 3/4ths of a cup of water. I put them all in my BRAND NEW blender, and after some confusion about the controls, I was blending away. Then suddenly the blender seemed to be making more noise than it had before. I turned it off, since it was probably done anyway, and poured it out into a glass. Three of the strawberries hadn’t blended, and it was a little watery. Okay, but not great. I put some Naked “blue machine” in it, and all was not lost.
Cut to tonight. I’m feeling reckless, and I think I know the fundamental problem with the smoothie from the night before: those crappy frozen strawberries! I have some fresh strawberries, so at first I think I’ll just replace the water with ice cubes to offset their frozenness, but then I see milk in the fridge, and impulsively decide to use it. New recipe: 5 frozen strawberries, 7 fresh ones, about 3/4ths cup whole milk. I skip the lemon juice.
I’ve poured everything into the blender, but I’m having a bit of trouble getting the glass top part to mate with the bottom motor part… And then I figure out why. The motor is actually loose in it’s housing! The part that fits into the glass/plastic bottom can be moved around a bit. But I figure that once it sits in place it’ll be held there by the glass part, right?
I turn it on, and it’s blending, and I’m trying to remember if it was always this loud, or if this is the loudness from right at the end of the previous blending, and then I smell burning rubber.
I turn it off, of course, but I don’t see anything obviously wrong, and we’re only about half blended, so I turn it on again. Then it starts spitting out black chunks and making obvious choking noises. At that point I’m thinking, I’m returning it anyway, so let’s see if we can at least finish this up before complete destruction… Eventually I’m satisfied, and turn the broken thing off.
Conclusion: take two was a VAST improvement over the first attempt. Still not great, but not as soupy or lame as the first, for sure. Florence said it tasted like yogurt, and I do think I could probably have used less milk flavor,but the consistency was right, so I’m not sure what to do. Suggestions for next recipes to try would be very welcome. It’ll have to wait a week or so until a new blender arrives.