Disaster in the Kitchen

I stumbled across the blog Oh She Glows over Christmas via another blog I like to read (and be totally intimidated by) No Recipes. I really liked Oh She Glows, not just because The Bachelor is back on and Kat and I have resumed our weekly cooking fest, but also because the author was local to Toronto, like me!

Keepin' it local. It's something I enjoy.

Anyway, we opted to try two recipes: Spicy Rainbow Rice and Bean Salad and Clementine Smoothies. Let's just say one of these ended with a total knockout victory and the other, tragedy.

We did a double recipe of both and wound up with a TON (like 12 cups worth) of the bean salad and 4 servings of the smoothies.

Rainbow Bean Salad

We replaced the peas in this recipe with edamame beans, both because I like edamame better and also because I was out of frozen peas. I also forgot to throw the earth balance in at the end, and the whole thing certainly didn't suffer for it.

Verdict: Delicious (even as leftovers!)

Now. The Smoothie. You can probably see where this is going, given that I said one recipe was a disaster.

The smoothie called for frozen banana and avocado chunks, which was all fine and good until my blender decided it didn't like the frozen banana chunks.

Which is weird, because, you know, it's a blender. It really shouldn't have issues with them.

There was a grinding sound. Then a whirring sound.

Then smoke.

Yep, the part where the motor attaches to the canister cracked in half, shaving off a ton of plastic while it was at it.

Sigh. So much for that wedding present. This is why I can't have nice things.

You might be asking how we sampled the smoothies then. Thankfully, I own an immersion blender (actually, I own two). We let the fruit warm up a bit, then pureed it.

I was still so frazzled from the broken blender that I forgot to take a picture.

Although I enjoyed the smoothie overall, I'm still not totally convinced about the inclusion of avocado in desserts. Something about it throws me off.

Verdict: Eh (complete with shoulder shrug). It was good, but not worth the destruction of my blender good, you know?