Recently, Keepitcoming Love and I received a few new appliances from the wonderful folks of Farberware in anticipation for their new line, debuting this September. The three new pieces include a blender, food processor, and coffee and tea machine, and are all made of stainless steel with LED touchpad controls. Today, we checked out the blender and made our first batch of homemade hot sauce.
The Farberware blender retails for $59.88 and features a seven cup capacity for all of your liquifying projects. I would have killed for this when my wisdom teeth had been taken out. Taking it out of the box, it has a few features and interesting add-ons that I'm a fan of. There's a special cord hiding system in the bottom of the machine, which allows you to store the cord and keep it out of the way or tether it closer to your outlet. Speaking from the point of view of someone who continually stretches the limits of most appliances, I found the cord a hair too short and, though I appreciated the hiding system, I didn't find that I really used it while using the blender.
So, the recipes. I tested this out on two of my favorite foods, hot sauce and milkshakes. The hot sauce was the brainchild of an unexpected bumper crop of Hungarian Wax and Jalapeno peppers, all five of which you can see here. Each pepper happened to ripen in a different color, thus inspiring the name "Rainbow Sauce" for my eventual product. I expect to trademark it by next week. The hot sauce was perfect to test out in the new blender. After checking out a few recipes, dumping my ingredients in, and turning the ignition, I played around with the settings.
The blender's LED touchpad isn't really a touchscreen in the sense of an iPad, but is configured more like a fancy keyboard with a persistent backlight. It's somewhat difficult to tell when the blender is off or on as the light stays on at all times. It does not have a safety lock when the pitcher is off its stand. It has manual settings for ULTIMATE CONTROL and pre-set speeds. I tested all of them and didn't find much of a difference between them, but left with the new found knowledge that this blender is powerful. In both a good way and a bad way. On one side, it only takes about three pulses on the medium setting to get a smooth, creamy milkshake. On another side, those three pulses nearly pulverized it into oblivion and made crumbs of the three Oreos I crammed inside. Slap a Tengwar inscription and call me Sauron, because this was almost too powerful for its own good.
12:03 is sexytime. Milkshake, anyone?
The little perks of buying a nice blender are similar to the perks of buying a nice car. Our last blender was loud, not very powerful, and had a faulty design that made it nearly impossible to clean. People often ask what the appeal is in nicer versions of the same thing. Mercedes over Honda. iPod over Zune. Leather over latex. The answer is that the sum of its parts may appear to be the same, but the details are so enticing that it makes it completely worth it. Take this blender. The stainless steel accents are both pretty and easy to clean. The Easy Clean button is an ingenious concept that is just now being put into reality. A drop of hot water and dish soap and a thirty second pulse and the blender is clean. And this! This is fucking awesome!
Measuring lid...or bomb diggety shot glass? My lawyers endorse the former!
With the hot sauce, the blender did its job correctly, but my ratios were a bit off and to get the consistency I desired without adding too much liquid, I had to strain the sauce to take away some of the pulpy fiber leftover from the peppers and onions. Once strained, the hot sauce was relatively seamless and tasted oddly like I'd expected it to taste- wildly, vehemently tangy with a pungent heat that requires a deep inhalation and a slight bit of smoky sweetness. Not bad for a first try.
"The Pound and the Fury" was already taken.
Although my rainbow motif turned out like a rejected Lisa Frank design and my five little peppers ended up looking like they'd passed through the cat's digestive tract once or twice, I was pretty smitten with the end result. All in all, this is a blender I can get on board with. It's easy to use, easy to clean, has a sophisticated design scheme, and allows me to live out my spicy, sweet dreams. How many Make A Wish Foundations and birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese can make that claim? I'm proud to have made my first hot sauce in this, and I'm proud to add it to our collection of appliances. I think it's a good first blender and a good blender to easing oneself into some of the more finely pureed intricacies of cooking. 
Nine out of ten discerning single felines agree that the housing box makes an excellent makeshift cave. Who knew? Special thanks to the folks at Farberware and Russell Hobbs, Inc, for hooking us up with these. Stay tuned for my foray into dough! And potato chips!
Labels: 8, beverage, drink, hot, kitchen gadget, sauce
So, the recipes. I tested this out on two of my favorite foods, hot sauce and milkshakes. The hot sauce was the brainchild of an unexpected bumper crop of Hungarian Wax and Jalapeno peppers, all five of which you can see here. Each pepper happened to ripen in a different color, thus inspiring the name "Rainbow Sauce" for my eventual product. I expect to trademark it by next week. The hot sauce was perfect to test out in the new blender. After checking out a few recipes, dumping my ingredients in, and turning the ignition, I played around with the settings.
The blender's LED touchpad isn't really a touchscreen in the sense of an iPad, but is configured more like a fancy keyboard with a persistent backlight. It's somewhat difficult to tell when the blender is off or on as the light stays on at all times. It does not have a safety lock when the pitcher is off its stand. It has manual settings for ULTIMATE CONTROL and pre-set speeds. I tested all of them and didn't find much of a difference between them, but left with the new found knowledge that this blender is powerful. In both a good way and a bad way. On one side, it only takes about three pulses on the medium setting to get a smooth, creamy milkshake. On another side, those three pulses nearly pulverized it into oblivion and made crumbs of the three Oreos I crammed inside. Slap a Tengwar inscription and call me Sauron, because this was almost too powerful for its own good.
12:03 is sexytime. Milkshake, anyone?
The little perks of buying a nice blender are similar to the perks of buying a nice car. Our last blender was loud, not very powerful, and had a faulty design that made it nearly impossible to clean. People often ask what the appeal is in nicer versions of the same thing. Mercedes over Honda. iPod over Zune. Leather over latex. The answer is that the sum of its parts may appear to be the same, but the details are so enticing that it makes it completely worth it. Take this blender. The stainless steel accents are both pretty and easy to clean. The Easy Clean button is an ingenious concept that is just now being put into reality. A drop of hot water and dish soap and a thirty second pulse and the blender is clean. And this! This is fucking awesome!
Measuring lid...or bomb diggety shot glass? My lawyers endorse the former!
With the hot sauce, the blender did its job correctly, but my ratios were a bit off and to get the consistency I desired without adding too much liquid, I had to strain the sauce to take away some of the pulpy fiber leftover from the peppers and onions. Once strained, the hot sauce was relatively seamless and tasted oddly like I'd expected it to taste- wildly, vehemently tangy with a pungent heat that requires a deep inhalation and a slight bit of smoky sweetness. Not bad for a first try.
"The Pound and the Fury" was already taken.
Although my rainbow motif turned out like a rejected Lisa Frank design and my five little peppers ended up looking like they'd passed through the cat's digestive tract once or twice, I was pretty smitten with the end result. All in all, this is a blender I can get on board with. It's easy to use, easy to clean, has a sophisticated design scheme, and allows me to live out my spicy, sweet dreams. How many Make A Wish Foundations and birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese can make that claim? I'm proud to have made my first hot sauce in this, and I'm proud to add it to our collection of appliances. I think it's a good first blender and a good blender to easing oneself into some of the more finely pureed intricacies of cooking. 
Nine out of ten discerning single felines agree that the housing box makes an excellent makeshift cave. Who knew? Special thanks to the folks at Farberware and Russell Hobbs, Inc, for hooking us up with these. Stay tuned for my foray into dough! And potato chips!