SmoothieQuest 2014

I'm making myself a smoothie.  Not, I will confess, the most exciting of subjects for a blog entry.  However when one considers some of the other topics that have crawled into this blog to die it can at least be stated that I'm maintaining a consistent level of relevance.

The entire smoothie situation started a little over six months ago when I had a couple of friends over to dinner.  I was thus presented with the task of preparing a vegan meal for three (it would have been a little mean to tuck into delicious meat while they were struggling through their vegetable mess) with little experience and an oven that didn't work.  The main course went down very well but I have to confess that desert was a bit of a disaster.  I had to make cream; vegan cream is made by taking coconut cream and blending it with chopped cashew nuts for bulk (plus a little vanilla and one or two other things).  Unfortunately I did not possess a blender.  I did my best with a mixmaster but the results resembled a rather thin porridge.  This is before one gets into the issue of mopping a cashew/coconut cream mixture off my kitchen walls.

Fast forward a couple of months and I was relating this story to my parents with an emphasis on the funny bits as part of an effort to entertain and an attempt to ward off questions like "what are you doing with your life?"  For me it was a moderately amusing anecdote.  For my parents it was a heaven sent opportunity.  Lo and behold on Christmas Day there amongst the other presents was a small but genuine blender.  Now all I had to do was think of something I could use it for.

Enter a pair of work colleagues who are apparently obsessed with smoothies.  One of them has a cooking blog called cookchewconquer (free publicity Monique) and smoothies have been a topic of conversation for the past few months.  Into this smoothie charged atmosphere and for no better reason than to contribute to the discussion I made mention of my newly acquired blender.  Within seconds I was bombarded with smoothie recipes that threatened to overwhelm my email server.  In self defence and because I felt vaguely that since I had the blender I should make use of it I resolved to make a smoothie this weekend.

To reach smoothie nirvana I would have to unpack my gift, figure out how to use it and purchase smoothie ingredients most of which were not on my usual shopping list.  A quick trip to the shops produced various fruits, yoghurt, honey and all that was left was to see if I could arrange these things into a delicious drink you can eat with a knife and fork.  I extracted my little blender from its packaging, it came out reluctantly cursing at the light but once convinced I was serious seemed delighted that it would be able to fulfill its purpose in life.  The instructions seemed to consist largely of advice like not attempting to clean the blades while the blender was in operation.

Having been officially warned against being a complete fucking idiot I felt ready to proceed.  Lumps of fruit, slops of yoghurt and honey and sloshes of milk were tossed into the blender more or less at random then with everything sealed and the blades as far away from my fingers as possible I pressed the go button.  Then I plugged the blender in and pressed the button again.  With an enthusiastic roar my blender lurched into activity and soon any resemblance its contents had to its component ingredients was lost forever.  In no time at all I had a functioning smoothie.  It tasted delicious and I was so delighted that I took a photo of my newly created glass of pink (raspberries) sludge.  I sat back with my smoothie and toasted my domestic ability. 

It was at that point that I noticed my washing machine had stopped working.