product endorsement: The Magic Bullet

I love to cook and I'm always on the lookout for gadgets and gizmos that will make life in the kitchen easier or just downright more fun.  So, for my birthday I asked for the Magic Bullet.  I know it's not a new product, but my love of milkshakes was hardly enough reason to bite the bullet and buy one.  However, intending to make homemade baby food for Taylor was a perfect excuse.
The Bullet is in fact a perfect tool for pureeing vegetables.  But, as it turns out, our daughter is too independent to be fed anything on a spoon, insisting on feeding herself finger foods from the get-go, so then I was back to owning a fancy 21-piece personal milkshake maker.  Just in time for eggnog shake season, I might add.
It was Roo who actually discovered the value of the Bullet for the Ebbrechts.  Our mornings can be pretty crazy some days, especially during Obamacare crunch time.  Roo is usually up and ready to head to the office before I can manage to lift my head off the pillow.  Granted, getting myself out of bed at a reasonable time has been easier this past week with Taylor actually sleeping through the night, but I've learned not to get too comfortable with that schedule.
So, all that to say, Roo started requesting smoothies for breakfast.  Brilliant!  Isn't that what's advertised on the front of the Magic Bullet box anyway?  Throw in a banana, a handful of strawberries and a dash of milk then 10 seconds later Roo is out the door with a good chunk of his daily allowance of fruit and dairy.  The advantage of the Bullet over a conventional blender is that the smoothie (or milkshake or frozen coffee concoction) is mixed up in the mug you'll drink it out of.  Use the handy lid/straw combo and you're good to go.  Measuring ingredients has never been easier and no extra dishes to clean!
But wait, there's more!  Beyond smoothies (or milkshakes or frozen coffee concoctions), our next favorite thing to use the Bullet for is homemade sauces.  Our personal favorite--ginger sauce reminiscent of Nakato Japanese Steakhouse.  Just throw in the ingredients and pulse it together.  No chopping onions, or finely mincing the ginger for this one.  So easy it saved my family from frozen pizza last night.
I could go on and on about how the personal blender takes up so little space on your counter, all the many accessories included in the box and not to mention the great ideas in the owner's manual/recipe book (cheesecake, what??), but you can get all that from the infomercial.  If you're into making single servings of frozen beverages or sauces, I highly recommend you pick one of these up.