Since January I have steadily increased the variety of foods that I consume as a raw foodist. Along with this increase in variety has come an increase in the complexity of food preparation. In the beginning I went with simple fare that required chopping and mixing- easy stuff I could do by hand using my cutting board and a knife. I made taboule, salsa, and guacamole. I put together salads, cabbage wraps and living-bread hummus sandwiches. I made delicious smoothies in the blender. All pretty simple.

As my interest in new flavors and textures grew, I acquired a dehydrator, allowing me to try crackers, living breads and dried fruits. Felicia joined me in my raw odyssey, prompting us to try new bread and cracker recipes, desserts, sauces, etc. But already I had discovered that food prepping for raw food meals is time consuming for a full time grad student. To save time, I was using the blender and food processor for chopping up my taboule and salsa ingredients along with the smoothies and other recipes. The poor blender couldn't hack it.

We're now on our third blender. One of them started smoking, another's motor wore out leaving us with slower speeds. The current one shakes and would probably whip itself off the counter if we didn't hold onto it. We've also been unhappy with the food processor's inability to make smooth nut pates and its too-small size.

So now we've come to a point where we want to buy something that is going to last through years of heavy use. It needs to be versatile and handle both our blending and food processing needs. After all, we want to add vegetable juices, raw warm soups and raw "ice cream" to our repertoire. Enter the Vitamix.

We attended a demonstration of the Vitamix at a local Costco and were impressed with what we saw and tasted, as well as with the answers provided by the guy doing the demonstration. Making nut butter was easy and very quick! Salsa came out perfectly, with visible chunks of vegetables that weren't too big or too small. Carrot juice tasted great- it was thicker than juiced carrots because the fiber is retained, which is fine by me as I want all the nutrients I can get (you can add water to thin it). Felicia asked him to do celery so she could see if it came out stringy. Nope- no strings whatsoever! The motor is so powerful that anything the guy made took half the time it takes us at home. Clean up was simple, although cleaning up after nut butter takes a bit longer.

I'm sure there's a learning curve before we are making all the things we imagine creating this summer, but we are so tired of weak blenders and burned out motors that we are willing to spend the money it'll cost for a Vitamix. If it lives up to its reputation, it'll be the last such product we buy for years to come.