New blender in the house

It's nearly three months since I wrote about our blender problem. Our trusty (and very good) blender had broken; the one attached to the food processor simply isn't as good. And somehow, fruit lumpies aren't as appealing as fruit smoothies.

Still, the rest of August passed us by. Then we went to the UK in September. I suppose we could have brought a blender there, to bring home; they're rather less expensive in the UK. But they're very heavy, and we were about at our limit of luggage.

October somehow passed us by. Suddenly we discovered that it was November. And, without thinking, we arranged for people to come here on Sunday, and I said I would make some soup....

Then it struck me, a few days later. Soup needs a functioning blender that produces purée rather than lumps. But Richard was in Egypt for a few days. So it wasn't until Friday that we were able to go and look for a new blender.

We went to Orphanides. I don't much like it as a supermarket; it's too big, and the displays are too high, and I don't like the lighting. But for electrical goods, it's not bad. And, indeed, they had about eight different blenders on display. One made by Bosch, one by Black and Decker (both of which I thought were power tool makers, not in the market for kitchen gadgets). One by Philips, if i remember rightly, and the rest by Moulinex.

We rejected one that was really a smoothie maker only, and one that had a huge base, and was remarkably ugly. As we were pondering, an assistant came up and asked us if he could help. So we told him what we wanted, and he said he recommended the big ugly one. Not that he said it was big and ugly... he said it was long-lasting, and any customers who bought it were very satisfied.

We said we liked the Moulinex, so he told us which one he recommended. It was the most expensive, by about twenty euros. I had been looking at one which looked rather smarter than the rest, with a black and silver-grey base (which would match some of our other gadgets), and a button for ice crushing. I suspect it was the ice in the smoothies that proved too much for our last blender, so the idea of one with a feature of crushing ice seemed like a good plan. The assistant shook his head somewhat, but in the absence of any other factors we decided to buy that one. I had tried looking online for reviews, but with no idea what would be available at Orphanides, it wasn't very helpful; and we needed the blender as soon as possible.

Then we found that we could use some of our accumulated Orphanides bonus card points, and get a twenty euro discount. Even better.

As we unpacked the blender at home, I did wonder if we'd made a terrible mistake. The manual said that the ice crusher was 400 watts, implying (though not stating) that the basic liquidiser had less power. Some of the blenders were powered at 500 or even 600 watts. Would it be enough to do what we wanted? I also realised it was glass, so that while it certainly looks attractive (for a blender) it's quite heavy:


That evening, I made us some fruit smoothies. And they were smooth. It's getting a bit chilly for ice-cold drinks, but we enjoyed them anyway.

Sunday evening, I liquidised the soup, after making it in the slow cooker and then cooling (the blender has dire warnings not to put in liquids hotter than 80C). That, too, worked very well. And wasn't as heavy as I had feared, even when full.

So, all in all, I'm impressed.