New Favorite Appliance!

I just received a late (very late) birthday gift from my mother-in-law. In fact, it possibly could have been a half birthday gift if she gave it to me 3 days later, lol, but I am not complaining because it is awesome! I've been wanting one of these for quite a while now, but I don't really like to spend money on myself so I hadn't worked up to buying it.

← (Hubby holding the smoothie. Sorry for the poor quality. It was taken with my phone.)

I'm talking about the NutriBullet! A couple of years ago my husband and I bought a juicer. We thought we'd be healthy and make shakes and all that. Well, it's so big and such a pain to set up ... and even more so to clean up afterwards. And you have to chop and peel a LOT of fruit and veggies to make much juice. Besides that, you throw away a lot of the essential nutrients when you throw away the fibrous part. It does come in handy, but most of the time it sits on its shelf collecting dust.

Doesn't look all that appetizing, but it was delicious!

So, I had heard a lot of good things about this NutriBullet mixer/blender. You can put so much in it and it tears right through it and makes it into a delicious shake. Well, delicious if you use the right ingredients anyway. So I always wanted to try one. And lo and behold, my mother-in-law got us one!

So I got it out of the box and hooked it up, cleaned all the parts, and went to the grocery store to buy some fruit and veggies. So far I have only tried sweeter concoctions. My favorite so far is:

• 1/2 apple
• 1/2 banana
• large handful spinach
• 1 TBSP natural nut butter
• 1 scoop whey protein powder
• 1/8 - 1/4 cup of water

It's so good!! You really can't taste the spinach either. Not that I have issues with spinach, but you don't typically start salivating when you imagine peanut butter, bananas, apples and ... spinach. But trust me, if you haven't had it, it is delicious. It also turns the smoothies into a very lovely green color.

Another thing that I love about this blender is that it is so much smaller than my juicer. I can leave it on the counter and it barely takes up any room. You don't have to wash anything except the blade attachment and the container that you hold your smoothie in. So much simpler. Also, the blades are nice and sharp so I haven't had problems with large chunks of apple or anything. It blends everything very nicely.

Credit: nutribulletblog.com

The machine is super easy to use too. You just drop the container/blade attachment into place and push down. It twists into place, locking it, until you are ready to stop and you twist it a little to release.

I have pretty much used my own recipes for this, tossing in whatever sounds good, but if you go online you can find recipes on their website ... or just use any other smoothie recipe and mix it up in the NutriBullet. That'd work too. I have seen on the infomercials that you can even make stuff like salad dressings and salsas with this too, which is pretty cool, especially since I've discovered a new salsa recipe that I love. I'll be sharing that in a post in the next couple of days.

Pros:

• minimal clean up
• doesn't take up much space
• easy to use
• comes with recipes
• blends evenly

 Cons:

• you still have to wash and roughly chop your fruits and veggies

If you'd like to order one for yourself, click the link HERE!