Vitamix and Breakfast

I don't know if you all have noticed that I haven't really been posting much on my cooking blog. I think the last post I made was in 2009. It isn't that I don't cook, I do. Often. But I have been in a little bit of a rut. I find that for dinner, I make a different variation on the same thing every night (usually a piece of meat/fish/poultry and a side vegetable).

That is until I got my Vitamix...

I have been wanting one for a long time. I saw demos at the Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo and fell in love with it. This blender is an industrial blender that is used at Jamba Juice and Starbucks, so it makes incredibly smooth frozen drinks. It also serves as a food processor, so it is really easy to make salsa and pesto. It also will liquify whole vegetables, so you get a lot of flavor, fiber, and phytochemicals in very few calories. You can either juice vegetables or blend them for a longer amount of time and turn them into a soup. The interesting thing about this machine, is that if you let it run for a long enough time (about 5 minutes if you start with cold water, 2 minutes if it lukewarm) it will heat up the soup with friction.

Here is a link for some demos:

http://www.vitamix.com/household/infocenter/livedemo.asp

Anyway, point of the story is that it really has inspired me to make new dishes and try new things. Interesting how one new kitchen appliance can inspire you to try so many new things. I actually might go blog about the breakfast I made this morning (without the vitamix even!)

The most successful creations I have made are the pineapple salsa and roasted red pepper hummus. I also made some walnut basil pesto that I put on top of walnut crusted chicken. It was pretty good! Another big success was the chicken tortilla soup (which was really the reason that we purchased the appliance).

One of the things it does is make is ice cream and sorbet. Here is the vanilla ice cream that I made with the vitamix. I thought it was pretty good, more of a frozen yogurt taste.

Below are pictures of the very first thing we made with the Vitamix...cream of broccoli soup. The recipe calls for so many vegetables, and all you need is non-fat milk (or soy milk or whatever your choice is).

Before Blending

After blending

It is a great way to eat healthy. Not only is the food chock full of vegetables, but most recipes have salt as optional and encourage you to try the food before adding salt, which leads to lower sodium food items. It is a nutritionist's dream :-)