Today, we’re bringing you a post that’s kind of different. We’re giving away a Vitamix 6300 Pre-Programmed Variable Speed 13-in-1 Blender with 64 oz. Jar from QVC. In our lives, it wouldn’t be too dramatic to say our version of this power blender has been a constant. That’s why we’re glad to tell you (1) QVC is selling one at a rare deal as its Today’s Special Value through August 21 only–Buy the $545 Vitamix 6300 64oz. 13-in-1 Blender for $429.96. Also, (2), to celebrate, we get to give one away to one of you. Keep reading for the fresh orange strawberry mint juice recipe we made last week, as well as our biased but honest thoughts on why buy Vitamix blenders.

It was true in those hectic summer months planning a wedding, when a lot of dinners looked like fruit and milk, blended with nut butter or greens. It was also true, as newlyweds, keeping a kitchen together for the first time: avocado pudding was a go-to dessert packed with healthy fat. Last year: pregnant, emotional and always hungry, I remember blitzing oranges and bananas even as friends pulled up for the weekend, well past the dinner hour. And, over the last six years together, we’ve used the Vitamix to puree soups, powder sugar, turn cashews to cream and chop carrots on the spot. I’ve relied on smoothies when I’ve been too tired to cook, too busy to think about dinner or too sick to do anything more than throw things in the machine.

I say all this now to explain, when we learned QVC wanted to send us a new Vitamix 6300 in exchange for a post, we said sure. We don’t need a new one, but, we wondered, maybe one of you might? Since this site has long been about real-food recipes as well as its personal stories and heavy thoughts, we know some of you reading would love a super-powered way to blend your own nutrient-packed drinks and dinners. Whether you’re recovering from the flu or caring for a toddler, you just can’t beat being able to make a meal in five minutes flat.

Why Buy Vitamix Blenders

I started reading a new book last week, Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, called “such a delight” by another blogger who referenced the author’s yearly retreat from her family to seek solace to think. There’s this great quote in the second chapter:

“I mean to lead a simple life … but I do not. I find that my frame of life does not foster simplicity. My husband and five children must make their way in the world. The life I have chosen as wife and mother entrains a whole caravan of complications. It involves a house in the suburbs and either household drudgery or household help which wavers between scarcity and non-existence for most of us. It involves food and shelter, meals, planning, marketing, bills, and making the ends meet in a thousand ways … it involves health, doctors, dentists, appointments, medicine, cod-liver oil, vitamins, trips to the drugstore. It involves education, spiritual, intellectual, physical, schools, school conferences, car-pools, extra trips for basketball or orchestra practice, tutoring, camps, camp equipment and transportation. It involves clothes, shopping, laundry, cleaning, mending, letting skirts down and sewing buttons on, or finding someone else to do it. It involves friends, my husband’s, my children’s, my own, and endless arrangements to get together, letters, invitations, telephone calls and transportation hither and yon.”

Lindbergh wrote this in 1955. Yet, in a single paragraph, she sums up what most of us are thinking when someone asks, “how are you?” and we try not to say “busy” in response. Daily life is hectic. So few of us can do it all. And in a small nutshell, that’s why I’m thankful for our Vitamix.

While, for Lindbergh, carving out time meant annual trips to the sea, for me, right now, it means minimizing to-do lists where I can. I love a fancy breakfast, for example, but my Vitamix makes nutrient-dense smoothies in the time it takes for Rocco to get bored with his book. Its super blending power allows me to throw anything from frozen fruit and yogurt to roasted tomatillos and peppers into the container and watch everything break down right before my eyes. By minimizing the time it takes to complete one task (making something to eat), the Vitamix frees me up to focus on other things. With added time, I can avoid the “feverish pursuit of centrifugal activities which only lead in the end to fragmentation,” as Lindbergh writes. I can open a book, my Bible—I can pray and think.





What You Can Make with a Vitamix

Of course you can make drinks in the Vitamix—at our house, this happens almost every day, and, in this post, we are celebrating a refreshing strawberry-orange-mint juice that’s as life-giving to the body as time alone can be to my soul. But you can likewise blend homemade almond milk, peanut butter chocolate milk, an avocado smoothie, blueberry kefir, a rosewater cardamom lassi or berry date smoothies with a kick. When you want a breakfast you can chew, use the Vitamix to blend up buckwheat crepes that fry up in your skillet in a flash.

With the Vitamix, you can puree softened potatoes and spaghetti squash. You can turn whip roasted carrot onion soup into a velvet texture that melts on your tongue. Top oven fries with lemon gruyere dressing. Dress a beet salad with homemade vinaigrette. Take your pick of sweets, like homemade soft serve, coconut dreams, raw cheesecake, banana ice cream, easy chocolate cake or powered coconut sugar for a recipe for yellow cake.

The Vitamix 6300

The Vitamix that QVC is offering now for the lowest price available on this model is also the Vitamix we’re giving away to one of you: the Vitamix 6300 Pre-Programmed Variable Speed 13-in-1 Blender with 64 oz. Jar. Truth be told, it has more features than ours does. Here are some specifics:

Includes Vitamix 6300 base, 64-oz container with soft-grip handle, tamper, 22-oz BPA-free smoothie bottle, The Art of Blending cookbook, Savor Recipes cookbook, and Let’s Get Started DVD

2HP motor

Variable speed control

Smoothies/Frozen Desserts/Hot Soups options

Pulse function

BPA-free container/bottle

The Art of Blending cookbook: 40 recipes, 95 pages

Savor Recipes cookbook: 289 recipes, 348 pages

Approximate measurements: Vitamix 20″H x 8″W x 9″L; weighs 11 lbs, 4 oz; Cord 6’L

UL listed; 7-year Limited Manufacturer’s Warranty

Available colors: black, red, white, platinum, berry, turquoise

Where to Buy a Vitamix

Why buy Vitamix is the easy part: convenience, power, fun. To go for it, head to QVC’s current deal: Buy the $545 Vitamix 6300 64oz. 13-in-1 Blender for $429.96.

How to Win a Vitamix: Giveaway Details & Instructions

There are three ways to enter this giveaway, detailed below. (Note this is our first time running a giveaway with Gleam, so if you have problems, email us!)

The Vitamix giveaway runs from today, August 20, 2016, for one full month, until September 21, 2016 at 12:00 a.m. At the close of the entry period, we will choose a winner at random, contact him or her and wait for a response for 48 hours. If we do not hear back within that window of time, we will contact a new random winner. Contest open only to domestic US addresses.

Vitamix Giveaway



*disclaimer: QVC sent us a new Vitamix, which we are giving away to one reader in the domestic USA, in exchange for a post about today’s special. We have used affiliate links in this post. All opinions expressed are our own.

last but not least! the recipe!

Strawberry Orange Mint Juice

Makes 30 ounces of juice

Note, if you don’t strain this juice, it’s still drinkable, just a little pulpy.

Ingredients:

1 cup frozen strawberries

6 clementine oranges (cuties)

A handful of fresh mint leaves

1.5 cups water

Directions:

Place all ingredients in Vitamix or other high-speed blender. Raise power from low to high and puree until smooth. Run mixture through strainer and pour into glasses, with ice if desired.