For the past couple of weeks I’ve been making fresh juice for breakfast every morning. I really like it. Sure, it’s a small bit more time consuming than making a bit of toast or having a bowl of cereal, but I don’t think I’ll be looking back.
Why?
Because it actually seems to be working ie. I’m losing weight and I’m not starving.
But using the juicer does mean that I’m a small bit limited in what I can do. The juicer will only work with fruit and vegetables that are soft enough to juice ie. that have a relatively high amount of liquid in them. If you want to make something with bananas or avocado, for example, you can’t use a juicer.
What you can use, however, is a blender.
I don’t know much about blenders. I’ve seen the “Will it blend?” videos, but I’m not ready to fork out several hundred euro for a blender.
Having said that, I’m also not going to get a blender that will break after a bit of slightly heavy use. That would be a false economy.
I spent a couple of hours last night browsing Amazon UK, eBay and a few other sites to see what was available.
Bottom line – you can spend as little as 20 euro and as much as several hundred, but there are a couple of things that you need to watch out for.
A lot of the blender based recipes are for smoothies and other fruit and vegetable based drinks that include ice. So you need to make sure that the machine you choose can handle ice. Not being overly scientific about it you need a more robust and powerful motor.
The Philips HR2094, which is part of the same product line as my juicer, seems to fit the bill and is also one of the products that Jason Vale recommends.
In terms of price and features it’s a fairly good model from what I can see:
- Anodised aluminium finish, fingerprint-resistant, scratch-proof and corrosion-resistant – not a big thing, but it’ll look well
- 750 watts of power–how smooth do you like your smoothie? – some of the other models simply don’t have the strength for handling ice
- Variable speed control
- Illuminated buttons, superb ice-crushing and pulse function
- 1.5 litre glass jar – so it’ll take a lot of fruit and ice
- Unique serrated blades for perfect blending of all ingredients – guess that’s important
- Detachable blade unit for easy cleaning – cleaning your cooking gear is important!
- Fruit filter for clear juicing of soft fruits – not going to need that as I already have a juicer
- 50ml measuring cap – not sure what I’ll use that for, but it’s probably useful
- Cord storage – not exactly a deal breaker, but I guess that’s useful
Hopefully it’ll be delivered before the end of the week, though I took the free delivery option from Amazon UK, so it could take up to a week.
Once I’ve got my new “toy” I’ll be able to expand the range of juices and smoothies etc., that I can make!
The best purchase you could have made 🙂
Once you get the taste of it, you’ll forget about the juicer.
The very good thing about the blender is that you get the fibre from the fruit as well 🙂 which doesn’t really count towards calories and you feel fuller for longer 😀
Win, Win situation and BTW, you can use seeds as well.
Great blog. Did you come across the Magic Bullet blender during your research? This was recommended highly by Noah from AppSumo recently, but it seems to have mixed reviews on Amazon.
@Darren
No – didn’t come across any mention of it at all.
The Philips HR2094 was recommended by more than one source and seems to do what I need