All the cooking magazines summer issues are featuring grilling recipes up the wazoo which is great if you’re a carnivore…but really… how many times do I want to barbecue a watermelon. Like once.

However, the mags are also featuring lots of smoothies because hot weather makes you want to not spend much time in the kitchen. And thus, I got hooked into obsessing about Vitamix. When Gwyneth Paltrow raves about it in Vogue, when Draeger‘s shows it on a pedestal in its “food museum/stores” and Costco even had a Vitamix hawker one day — “It pulverizes, juices, makes ice cream, soup, smoothies in the blink of an eye,” well I had to see what the fuss was about. And I was building up a deep hankering for a homemade smoothie.

It’s Sunday morning. I pull our old Oster blender out of the cabinet. Grabbed some faded strawberries, a handful of blueberries, some frozen banana (I always have them in fridge to to stop me from eating the whole carton of ice cream), a couple of tablespoons of Greek yogurt and one spoon of oat bran. I put the whole shebang in the blender and vrroom, vroom, I made a really tasty smoothie/breakfast. Even my guy liked it!

Well if that came out so good on my ancient machine, imagine how much better it would be with a modern Vitamix with its 1340 watts of cyclonic power. I google it. I find reviews, I find a youtube face-off run by Popular Mechanics. (see video below) And, surprisingly, I find the consensus for Vitamix isn’t universal. There’s a whole lot of fans of Kitchen Aid‘s traditional blenders including the august Cooks Illustrated.  And you can buy them for a fraction of the price!

Vitamix users (like those on Amazon), however, are another story. They are rabidly for or against. Those who shell out nearly $500 for the machine are serious about the health, lifestyle, versatility and pc-ness of their choice. Others are equally rabid that for most chores, other blenders are a better choice. If you want a juicer, buy a juicer. For the money you save you could buy a blender, a juicer and an ice cream maker that each are better at their jobs than the all-powerful Vitamix. I’m just saying.

You can do the research yourself. Or you can do what I did first & pull out your trusty old blender and take her for a spin. She may not be the fastest, smartest horse in the race…but I did enjoy my smoothie this morning and so am keeping this baby on the counter for the rest of the summer.  On the other hand, I’m frustrated to have  wasted the two hours of this beautiful day researching Vitamix and its competition.   On the plus side (being a perpetual glass half full kinda gal), it did give me something to blog about!

Related articles

• Smoothie Challenge turns into Smoothie Fast (greenandfrugalhousewife.com)
• Vitamix Envy, or From zero to vitamix in 400 dollars (ask.metafilter.com)
• “Walk in the Park” + Smoothie Madness (kindoflikefun.com)
• Vega Smoothie in a Healthmaster Blender (vegontherun.wordpress.com)
• Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, the Movie I’d Been Waiting For (millenialjuicer.wordpress.com)
• VitaMix 5200 Countertop Blender (kk.org)
• Everyday Happiness (sonieblog.wordpress.com)