Monday, October 10, 2005

All hail the immersion blender

Who would have known? The thing sat in our cupboards, relatively unused for 2-3 years now. Hans wanted it, "needed it", and my mom (the kitchen gadget guru - she passed her illness onto me you know) bought it for him for Christmas a few years back. I am still not sure why he needed it so, but he did and until now it has proven to be a big cupboard space occupier with loads of attachments to lose in the cupboard.

Nope, not anymore. Tonight I made Veeg's homemade black bean soup. So it isn't vegetable intensive, (but I could push the limits here...) but it is full of things Leif will.not.eat. by themselves. Like well, black beans - 2 cans of them. Plus onions, tomatoes (he does love tomatoes), garlic and other yummy stuff. I tossed cooked shredded chicken and salsa in as well.

He ate nearly THREE servings! I have never seen him request thirds before, even with his ever-favorite canned Beefaroni (don't even look at me like that... he loves it and it has hamburger in it... just try and get him to eat "meat" any other way).

Ok, so he spit out the whole beans, and the occasional onion I missed in my puree'ing efforts. And he wanted nothing to do with the cooked chicken (the meat thing again...). But he chowed on the black bean soup base (black beans, onions, tomatoes, garlic, chicken broth and salsa) like it was going out of style. The secret... the immersion blender!

I hate, hate, hate pulling out and using my blender. We have a nice, (very heavy) supposidly fancy one we got for a wedding present 5.5 years ago. But I hate pulling it out, running it and cleaning it. None of that my friend with this handy gadget ($22 at Costco).

Images of hiding vegetables with ease are floating to mind now...

Man am I glad my mom didn't have one of these. I would have grown up on pureed everything in her efforts to get me to eat vegetables that weren't potatoes, corn and okra (I was a weird child).

This may very well become my new standard baby shower gift...

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