Smoothie Days

A good friend of Steve's gave us an Oster blender as a wedding gift.  We used it for many things over the years, including to puree hot broccoli soup, the steam from which blew the top off the blender, and we ended up with hot broccoli soup all over the kitchen, and I learned a messy but unforgettable lesson about blending hot foods.  Somewhere along the way, the first blender gave out and we replaced it with a second Oster blender.  The new blender got a lot of use at first, but then I got a food processor and started using it for most of my blending needs.  The good old blender spent most of its time in the cupboard, only making an appearance for the occasional milkshake.  But then my middle child fell in love with fruit smoothies.  They were expensive to buy, so I bought him the Klutz Smoothies book as a birthday gift one year, and all of a sudden, the blender was back in demand.  The secret of the smoothie, according to the Klutz book, was frozen bananas.  So for years, we had little containers of frozen banana slices in our freezer (until we discovered fresh bananas work just fine as long as the other fruit you use is frozen) and the blender was whirling up a lot of smoothies.  We tried several of the Klutz recipes over the years but eventually adapted and perfected our own version, which we like better than the ones we buy at restaurants.  My smoothie-loving son is off on his own now, still blending fruit and juice with his Magic Bullet, but my daughter has become a smoothie lover, too.  So during the summer months, the humble old Oster blender shares counter space with the snazzy new food processor and gets an almost daily workout turning frozen strawberries, frozen peaches, frozen blueberries, bananas, and orange juice into thick fruit smoothies.   I know that a couple of years from now when my daughter is off on her own, every time I see that good old Oster blender sitting patiently in the cupboard, it'll make me miss my kids and the smoothie days.  I might even get a little teary-eyed, or maybe I'll just pull it out and blend up my own smoothie!