I bought a blender at the birth of my first child. After the youngest child grew out of baby food, I used the blender mainly for making mayonnaise from egg and oil or reducing bread heels to breadcrumbs. After a while, the kids learned that blenders make great milkshakes. But not too often, because they did not use their pocket money to replace the ice cream.
I decided to wait until the blender wore out to buy a food processor. That took about 40 years. The first thing I asked when I went to look at food processors was “Will it make mayonnaise?” On that assurance, I bought my first food processor and did not replace the blender. The mayonnaise and the breadcrumbs were both great.
So were the soups from cooked and puréed veggies. And the sliced potatoes for scalloped potatoes. And the grated cabbage for slaws. The food processor stands on the counter between the stove and the sink and is never put away.
My devotion to food cooked from scratch using minimally processed ingredients must have come from my parents. My mother liked to cook, we all hated canned vegetables and there were no frozen foods until the early fifties. My father was a connoisseur of wholesome country food and haute cuisine from high end restaurants, where he would treat us all maybe once a month.
But when I became a housewife in 1960s Vancouver, there were supermarkets selling cake mixes and packaged cereals and frozen foods and pop which quickly became staples in our household. Until the day I experienced an epiphany, standing in a supermarket with a fistful of Kool Aid packets in my hand, while a loud voice in my head said “No! You’re the mother. Put away the junk.” And my husband began growing vegetables instead of dahlias, too.
I had a juicer for a while but it just gathered dust until I traded it for a cream whipper, having given up on wimpy hand beaters. I gave away the cream whipper when I bought a good, easy-to-clean hand beater. I still have not replaced the blender. But I’ve been thinking about blenders due to the craze for green smoothies.
I’m not going to buy another blender to make smoothies because I have some concerns. I don’t believe in quick fixes and I am not convinced that over-reliance on liquefied, raw food is a healthy habit. I already know why it’s important to get enough saliva into our food. I’ve seen some smoothie recipes calling for stuff my mother never heard of and I suspect that smoothies require more veggies to make a single serving than would be used in a regular meal. I think the weight loss that accompanies a diet of smoothies could be dangerous. And eating by blending will further reduce cooking skills in which this generation is already seriously deficient.
Mostly I’m just offended by the casual disrespect exhibited by people who drink their meals for both the benefits and pleasures of eating a varied diet of good, cooked food.
Marjorie Stewart is past chairwoman of the Nanaimo Foodshare Society. She can be reached at marjorieandalstewart@shaw.ca.