As the blender turns

Last weekend, I decided to make soup. The weather was cold and gross -- think dark black clouds that just hung around. The soup started out well enough; I chopped green beans, potatoes, onions, carrots, and garlic and had them artfully arranged on a plate. Then came the sauteeing and taking jemima's advice, I used vegetable oil, instead of my usual olive, but I think I must have dumped in a gallon of oil because I swear, the onion slices started doing the backstroke. I kind of gulped and kept going, waiting until the onion was translucent, before adding the carrots, potatoes and green beans, in that order.

I then opened a can of stewed Italian-style tomatoes, which needed to be blended. I grabbed the blender and its assembly from the dishwasher, screwed it together and then put it on the blender stand, tossed in the tomatoes and hit the on button. The blender blended, but when I lifted the jug, the thing started to leak red tomato everywhere. I kind of shrieked and dumped the tomato puree into the soup pot, but so quickly that some of it actually splashed onto the stove and also into the grill in the middle of the stove. Note the jug was leaking the whole time. Distressed, I cleaned up all of the tomato puree and then put the blender in the sink, which is when I realized that I had destroyed the blender assembly.

Now, you have to know the history of the blender to understand how catastrophic this is. My mom's Osterizer came into my possession a couple years ago, on the basis that she would buy a new blender sooner if she didn't actually have one. Plus, I wanted a blender of my own to make soups (this was when I was still delusional enough to think I had culinary skills). So I ran off with the Osterizer, and my mom went on a quest for her blender. She bought and returned no less than five blenders before settling on her lovely, shiny blender. And now, after all of that searching and experimenting, I had broken her less-than-one-year-old blender.

Anyway, my mom accepted the loss of her lovely, shiny blender with equanimity and I vowed to find her a replacement part for her assembly. The conclusion of the story is that Monday, when eating some of the leftover soup for lunch, my mom found a piece of the rubber ring in her food. ::headdesk::

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours! Let's hope your culinary delights are less adventureous than mine! Travel safely and be well.