I do smoothies in a blender and they are made with no sugar and lots of ice cubes. It grinds them up into a fine slush. Not sure how 'heavy duty' your model is, but most of this is donw in my Vita Mix blender, which can really take a beating. You can use a blender to puree anything fruity and then dry it into fruit leather too.

The best use of my blender is in grinding things like hard stick cinnamon. Actually, I still don't recommend it - (because I've broken several other less powerful grinders), the blender will flip the heavy sticks so they don't jam the blades. Good for grinding most anything - but especially stuff like horseradish or hot peppers, because it has a lid to put on, so the fumes aren't over-powering.

Also - great for making mayonaise - as the oil can be added very slowly (resting cup of oil on the lid) - to avoid adding too quickly which would spoil the emulsion process.

Yep - love my blender. (Oster). I do note, however, that more recent ones are sold with a plastic jar, rather than glass, still prefer the glass.

Bejay

I bought a one-horsepower blender (746 watts) for an old boyfriend and somehow I ended up with it when we broke up. It doesn't even need juice added when blending a banana--it makes a puree so fine I was able to substitute it for lemon juice in a lemon chess pie recipe to make banana chess pie.

But yeah, the only option was a plastic jar, no glass available, and you can't unscrew the bottom where the blades are, so you have to rinse it right away or it's a pain to clean.

Melissa

The Oster, I believe also had a more round stainless steel jar and lid, along with a heavy duty blade. I bought these options for my Oster Kitchen Center some years ago and have used them instead of original glass jar, of which I have a spare of. The screw on base fits both types. Goodmans has the most extensive set of assories and parts for the Oster, and Sunbean (all the same company now, under Jarden who is also Villaware and Food Saver!)

Here is a link that might be useful: Goodmans

Just can't find frog legs in the store right now! Shucks!

So instead I bought a great big Mexican Papaya and a coconut. If the blender can grind up coconut, I'm pretty sure it'll do a job on cinnamon sticks.

I got some dark chocolate and am gonna make my own papaya coconut candy bars. The things a complete idiot like me can do with a blender. This thing's fun.

Don't forget to take the seed out of the papaya tho -

Some things just won't work in it.

Bejay

There's about a glass and a half of coconut milk in a coconut. Good Stuff. But you can't make candy bars from ground up Papaya directly. It's too liquid. The stuff needs to be reduced by cooking it down a bit. That also seems to have the effect of concentrating the sugars which is good for candy bars. The coconut also needs a little cooking to soften it up even though the coconut milk was used to lubricate the blender while the chaos of grinding up the coconut was going on.

Making candy bars is no easy science project, let me tell you but I'm sat with the first results, though they are oddly shaped beasts. Next time I'll do better. Need to figure out some way to form them up uniformly into a common shape.

When I made chocolates some years ago, I used clear plastic molds and painted each with melted chocolate. Then the cavities were filled with whatever I felt was good with chocolate, like fruit cream flavors, pistachio and other nuts, cherries, caramel, rum and raisins, and of course dried toasted coconut. Many of the fillings, molds and chocolate were bought through Kitchen Krafts. Some mold sizes are the shapes of Heath bars, peppermint patties, and even large bon bons.

I tried grinding cinnamon sticks in my small coffee grinder. Once the sticks are broken into small pieces, they acted like sand and abraded (frosted) the insides of the clear plastic grinder cover.

Presto! It's Pesto!

I have for some time now appreciated pesto sauce as it is quick and dirty to boil up some Penna and just spoon out some pesto on it while it's still hot. I was never really thrilled that such a small bottle of pesto cost so much compared with spaghetti sauce on the same store shell. And after checking the ingredient list, I was somewhat even more perplexed. Surely, those pine nuts didn't contribute that much to the cost?

What's nice is that pesto is about as quick and dirty to whip up in a blender as it is to spoon out over Penna. Home made spaghetti sauce is a much more ambitious undertaking. You don't have to cook Pesto.

So into the blender go the following ...

A goodly size handful of fresh ( not dried out ) Basil leaves, some cilantro and an Anneheim Pepper for zing, the pine nuts, some Oregano, Parmessan and Asiago Cheese chunks, a handful of garlic cloves, olive oil, lemon juice and for a bit of a difference from the norm, half a bottle of artichoke hearts. Grind it up and bingo! This produces about four times as much as one of those little bottles.

Next time, I might taint it with sun dried tomatos and balsamic vinegar instead of artichoke hearts.

I wonder if I can use this stuff for Pizza Sauce?!

The pine nuts add texture, and are good to use after being roasted a bit in the oven. Extra virgin olive oil and fresh farlic are also used. For pizza, you can spread this on he dough, add small dollops of ricotta cheese, and sprinkle a bit of oregano before baking. A pizza dough can also contain oregano and/or other italian spices like rosemary, thyme, and others.

Ah! A pizza fan!

I like to mix butter and a small touch of sour cream or alternatively, four cheese sauce, with ground up garlic cloves and a few sun dried tomatos to form a sauce base for PRAWN PIZZA! To this add Oregano, a bit of fennel seed and some of the reduced and drained lemon juice from steaming up the prawns. Then, here's a little trick. Increase the Yellow/orange color by adding a very small bit of finely ground safflower. It's gotta be finely ground or it'll be tough to leach out the color. This Safflower trick is a good one to use on really buttery clam chowder, similar to New England style Clam Chowder, and turn it into what I call 'Golden West Clam Chowder'. Of course there are a few other differences between the 'Golden West' and 'New England' chowders. They are not the same thing.

After putting down this Prawn sauce on the pizza dough, layer generously with the prawns, some flaked crab meat and some scallions, thin sliced, including some of the greens.

Sprinkle with a little red pepper, ground Parmesan and Asiago and cover again with Mozarrella. U-Bake-It!

If you did it right, the surface of the crusts will even glow golden from the buttery sauce and there won't be any of this pizza left to talk about, soon after it comes out of the oven.

Yum.. NE Clam chowder is one I make all the time in winter. There is a New York style too, but that has tomatoes in it. For cooking the shrimp, I use a bit of Old Bay seasoning..

We got a yogurt machine a couple months ago because I love yogurt smoothies. Every morning the hubby takes two jars of home made yogurt and whatever fruit is on hand (at the moment it's strawberry) and makes me a smoothie to take to work. I don't know what I'd do without my morning smoothies!

I really need to try that making a puree and drying it into fruit leather idea though. I haven't started using the dehydrator yet, but plan on it soon! Have to preserve my herbs!

Dehydrator= dried herbs..

Yee hah! That was butt kick'n flavor!

4 or 5 large shallots
- cut away and discard the husks
- thin slice ( very thin )
- coat bottom of pan with olive oil and fry 'til browned
- add about 1/2 cup lemon juice and continue to fry till caramelized

2 Habneros Peppers
- Thin slice and add to fry pan with other ingredients

20 cloves of garlic
- grind up in blender, adding lemon juice to lubricate
- pour into fry pan with other ingredients and brown all ingredients for about 2 minutes

- pour all ingredients from fry pan into blender

2 sticks of butter ( or more if you prefer )
- cut into pats and toss into blender

1/8 cup cilantro
- add to stuff in blender

- run blender until all ingedients become nearly liquid. Results should look very similar to dijon mustard, but not taste that way. ( go on! taste it! )

- pour contents of blender into a suitable container with lid that you will later be able to easily spoon out of it.
- let cool and refrigerate.

- in advance of use, spoon out some of this concoction onto a small dish and let it come to room temperature so you can spread it easily.

1 loaf sour dough bread
- preheat oven to 300 degrees.
- cut bread lengthwise, splitting top from bottom.
- spread the conconction on both halves of bread, split sides ( not on the crust side! )
- place both halves in a pyrex cooking plate, split side up, and cover with a modest amount of mozzarella or other favorite cheese
- place in preheated oven and let bake for 7 or 8 minutes
- turn oven on low broiler setting and let broil for an additional couple minutes to melt the cheese and the concoction directly from the broiler heat.

- Take out, turn off oven, cut into suitable pieces and gobble it up.

You can never find garlic butter in the stores. You are forced to buy frozen garlic bread. That so disappointing!

But hey, blender to the rescue.

Warning: rich in butter!

Got enough here to last several days, if not weeks.

My little food processor makes a decent herbed butter. Last summer I had rosemary, and thyme. These were chopped up fine, and then garlic was added. Then came the butter. It was prcessed a few more seconds whle I pour in some extra virgin olive oil. The soft paste was put into some small plastic partitions, like an ice cube tray. The tray was lined with plastic wrap first however. The containers were frozen and then the herbed butter blocks were seperated and bagged. When I want to roast a chicken or use the butter in a recipe, its easy to grab a chunk and add it to the meal. I also made a garlic bread with this that was pure heaven.

It's interesting that you say that you can use garlic butter for other things.

I just used a couple tablespoons of my new batch over Prawns & Scallops with wild and long grain brown rice and Snow Peas. Yum.

I was lucky to have wild rice after Katrina hit Louisiana. That hurricane wiped out much of the source of wild rice. But I found some that must've come from the Lake Superior region from Minnesota through Wisconsin and the Upper Penninsula of Michigan. Native Americans produce wild rice in that region.

Also added some to some baked stuffed shrimp and scallops. It really added some nice richness to the seafood stuffing.