Day 22

Whole30: Day 22

Blah blah, I suck for not writing over the weekend.  I can’t promise I’ll do better next weekend, either, since we’re heading out of town for my wife to go to a conference.  This is me apologizing in advance!

So instead of telling you all about our food, and RR’s first bike ride (SUCCESS!) this weekend, let me tell you a story about how we came to be proud owners of a Vitamix blender.  On Friday (well, long before Friday), we had this long conversation about our lack of blending power in our house.  We have The World’s Shittiest Blender, that we use to “blend” things, which is using that term loosely.  We also have The World’s Worst Food Processor, which was gifted to us when our former World’s Best Food Processor broke.  Oh, and then there’s the immersion blender that failed.

Paleo doesn’t require a lot of blending, but blending makes a lot of things easier.  Like paleo mayo, or BBQ sauce, or smoothies and marinades.  So, thank you tax refund, we considered buying a Vitamix, which a lot of people (including my gluten-free co-worker) swear by.

So here’s where the story gets AWESOME.  So we looked at new ones, which cost a fucking fortune.  Dude.  But it was like… hmm, do we buy a blender OR get new windows for the house.  It’s around that price.  Then I found Ethel.  We’ll call her Ethel, cause that’s her name.  Ethel was selling a Vitamix blender on CraigsList.  I emailed her, and she just emailed me back saying: “Call me @ 555-5555, Ethel.”  OK, Ethel.

So I called her, and she told me all about her raw food diet that she couldn’t keep to.  Everyone told her that she needed a Vitamix, so she bought one and used it twice.  She really only bought it because it was red.  She named her price (a full $250 less than we were expecting to spend), and we set a time and place for the trade to go down.

So Saturday at 11am, we sat in the gas station parking lot waiting for Ethel’s arrival in a “Blue Jeep.”  (Side note:  Why does making public CL deals always feel illegal?  Or like a drug deal?)  About 15 minutes past 11am, a blue jeep with SILVER FLAMES painted on the front rolls into the parking lot.  I say to my wife, “I don’t know if Ethel sounds like a lady who drives a Jeep with flames on it?”  But then my cell phone rang, “I’m here!” Ethel says.  Huh.  I love this town.

So Ethel steps out, Vitamix in hand, and offers to plug it into an outlet near the gas station hut.  How she knows there’s an outlet, I have no clue.  But she does.  She fills it up with water from inside the hut and turns the sucker on.  She gives me the recipe binder and DVD, I give her the money, and here it now sits on our counter:

Behold the power of BLENDING.  We made a couple of smoothies this weekend and the thing just obliterates whatever you put in there.  Like, ENTIRE APPLES.  Then we made Nom Nom Paleo’s Sister’s Phenomenal Green Chicken (pictured here on our grill), which we then ate like savage beasts when they were done.

The moral of the story is – sometimes CL really pays off, as does calling people and not relying solely on email correspondence.  Don’t underestimate the power of a really good blender.  Oh, and also, don’t judge a Jeep by its cover.