In Which Cartooniverse Burns Out Two Blenders. In One Week.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So, the Dearly Beloved™ and I got it into our collective brains to take the copious amount of broccoli stalk that were sitting in the freezer. And make ourselves some soup. I thought it was a great idea.

She is a champeen soupçette ( new word ) and so I left it to her. She spent the better part of a quiet bitterly cold Saturday puttering in there, creating. Now and then I’d go in and ask about this or that.

We wound up with a large pot of soup. It was quite…fibrous, since the stalks are just such. The flavor was milder than I’d thought it’d be, but as they say, you can always add MORE pepper but it’s a bitch to get it out. ( They used to say that about salt, but ever since my Ex-MIL turned me on to the phenom that is the Raw Potato Trick, over-salinated soups and stews prostrate themselves before my might ).

The texture of the soup was repulsive to my Dearly Beloved. SO MUCH SO, that she went and took the small strainer we have and slowly strained out the fluids. This, she regarded as the soup. That immense 8 pound container of thick, well stewed and flavorful fibrous goop? A mystery. A lump of unknown potential.

A few days later I got inspired and bought something we don’t normally keep in the house. Velveeta. ( We’re Cabot Cheese snobs.. In this case, Velveeta was the answer.

I took a pound block, a bottle of Yuengling lager, some dashes of Worchestershire Sauce, Greek yogurt and a blender. I took a few cups of hot water to help thin out the fibrous mass a bit.

And dumped some into the blender. Now, I admit here that I used just the fibrous mass and hot water in the blender while the Velveeta and Greek yogurt was softening down on the stove.

This is a Black and Decker food processor. Not the king of food processors, but a reasonable machine. After a few minutes, it started to have that evil electric burning scent. The scent of the motor being very very unhappy.

So, I stopped. And let it cool. And added more hot water to thin to mash. And tried again. And after a few moments, the scent returned. And it shut down. And has never turned on again.

I went and took our regular blender/ smoothie maker and took the already-somewhat-blended mash. And kept going. And did just fine. Made what wound up being a phoenix-like meal, which took the unpalatable mash and made a really tasty soup. Great stuff !

I had fibrous goop left and this morning went to attempt Batch #2. And…the blender/ smoothie maker started smelling like, well, you know.

Now, I struggle with the idea that this mash is THAT thick.

Here’s the thing. I know that if the material is SO thick that it cannot be pulled down into the center of the blender as the machine turns, the odds are pretty good that the stuff is too thick. This was not the case here. I made sure I’d added enough fluid so that it was able to…blend.

Now I have soup. And a deeply unhappy blender/ smoothie maker.

And am saddened at the loss of two blenders in one week.

Someone tell me where I went wrong- and more importantly, please recommend a device that won’t burn up while doing the heavy lifting ( blending ).

2

As a veteran of a thousand frozen margarita parties, and a onetime bartender, I will tell you that a blender can sometimes handle ice, and sometimes it cannot.

GOOD: Waring. Expensive, but worth it.
UNKNOWN: Black and Decker. I’d THINK it could handle a BRICK, based on the name, but your experience seems to dictate otherwise.
BAD: Hamilton Beach. Burned out two blenders in one day attempting to pulverize ice. The thing had a SETTING for ice, but apparently attempting to actually DO it burns out the belt. Beware!

3

Yeah.

Okay, I’m willing to invest in something that won’t smell like Toons Goes To The Drag Races Out At The County Speedway every time I use it.

But see, this Waring branded blender SAYS it will crush ice, but it’s the cheapest Waring just about that Amazon shows.

Suspicious. Frightened.

:smiley:

4

The Search Results page for Waring Blenders on Amazon.

5

Mine is the Commercial Bar Blender, and it will pulverize ice into a nice smoothie, no trouble at all.

Can’t say I’ve ever tried it on broccoli, though, but it does make nice fruit smoothies.

And margaritas. Do those count as smoothies?

6

Brief hijack - the “In Which…” style of title is appealing, and I know I’ve read it somewhere before the Dope, but where? Twain? Kipling? Dickens? Old Mr. Toad? I’ve been idly wondering for the longest time.

7

Why not a Blendtec? If they can blend iPhones and glass marbles, your broccoli fiber mass should be nothing

8

It seems to be common enough to have a TVtrope page. There’s a huge number of books there, you’ll have to check for yourself.

9

Of course they do. Don’t be silly. They have fresh fruit !!

Napier, Dickens made use of it. After I posted the O.P., I remembered that there was a Pitting a while back about certain phrases and wording used in OP’s that were irritating to some. That was one of them. :smack:

MacTech, This BlendTec’s tempting !!!.

10

Ignore the skeptics. It’s appealing.

11

It is.

It always makes me think of Don Quixote, which has a major hard-on for it. Mostly matter-of-factly, but at a certain point, Cervantes decides that the style has gotten old enough for him that he starts having fun with it:

“Part II, Chapter 66
Which treats of what he who reads will see, or what he who has it read to him will hear.”

“Part II, Chapter 70
Which follows sixty-nine and deals with matters indispensable for the clear comprehension of this history.”

Anyway, I’m sure it’s way older than even that.

12

When I was in the blended coffee business, we had Vitamix blenders on the back counter. All-day long workhorses, those were. I’ve recommended them to a couple friends since and they’ve been very happy with them.

13

I have a Waring bar blender like this that’s lasted 10+ years and it’s a beast. I don’t know how it stacks up to a Vitiamix and based upon the stuff I’ve seen on youtube the BlendTeck seems almost Godlike, but it will blend the livin’ shit out of anything unfortunate enough to be restrained within.

14

Yes.

My grandmother gave me the Waring as a Christmas present some thirty years ago. She did not know why I needed a blender (as opposed to why SHE thought I needed a blender), but Waring was the model to buy in the 1940s, and she spoke highly of it.

The thing has been crushing ice since 1984, and shows no sign of slowing down. As opposed to two separate Hamilton Beach blenders, which seized up and burned out their belts in seconds… while blending liquid… on their highest settings… which then had ice cubes dropped into it.

I figured the first blender was faulty, so I took it back and got a replacement. Which did the same thing.

I do not buy Hamilton Beach appliances, now.

15

I destroyed an Oster blender once making pesto so I wouldn’t recommend that brand.

Broccoli stems, however, are delicious if you peel off all the fibrous outside before cooking and just use the tender innards. I like the stems better than the tops and usually pick the bunches with the thickest ones.

16

Ok – I take it that you did not peel the broccoli stems/stalks? Do that next time.
Try cutting broccoli stems in long flat slabs… dip in Tempura batter,deep fry. The florets are very good too.

17

Peeled? That’s a thing? I must pursue this concept.

Did we cook a part that is so fibrous that nobody eats it?

18

Yes. Not only is it a thing it is THE thing. Even my guinea pig won’t eat the outer part of the brocco-stems and he’s sort of like a small, furry garbage disposal. It’s like the woody part at the far end of the asparagus. Not for eating by anything with fewer than four stomachs. bleh

You should forget about Hamilton Beach for anything that needs some kind of real turning power (torque) to work. No blenders or hand mixers unless you want to be really familiar with the burning smell. Their toaster ovens used to be okay, though. I guess they just don’t do moving parts well.

19

Laboratories buy Waring blenders for food sample prep. I never saw one burn out. Ever.

20

Food processor comes to mind, should you have this dilemma again (I third the peeling of the broccoli stems, btw). Some things just need whirling knives.

I also like the title. I was going to say Winnie the Pooh, but clearly Cervantes has that trumped. Piffle to the critics.