The Visa Diaries

Early on when Matt and I first started dating, apropos of very little, he announced to me that he had a great blender. He really emphatically wanted me to know what good quality his blender was, and went on about it at some length. This did not exactly make my knees go weak. “I’ve got a good blender, too” I said, referring to a cobalt-blue KitchenAid that had been my first grown-up home appliance purchase when I graduated from college. He looked at it, and was a bit dismissive, “Yeah, that looks ok. But I’ve got a really great blender.” I think the conversation must have ended about there, because I could not muster any more interest for the topic.

From that exchange until last weekend, I maintained the impression that my sweetie was a little weird and overzealous on the topic of blenders (actually kitchen stuff in general, but I can leave that for another post). It didn’t stop me from loving him or agreeing to marry him, but it did get filed away in that mental drawer where we all keep of secret judgements about the strange little quirks of others.

His error in strategy, I now realize, was announcing his blender asset in the middle of winter, when there wasn’t so much of interest to blend. Last weekend however, when he suggested that we could make frozen strawberry margaritas in his excellent blender, all of a sudden my attention for his appliance skyrocketed. “Frozen strawberry magaritas!!!” I thought, “I’ve never heard of such a genius idea!”

We went to the supermarket and got the ingredients: a big bag of frozen strawberries, a can of Limeaid, and a bottle of Jose Cuervo’s medecino. (We discovered while enjoying his elixir, that Jose Cuervo’s name in English would translate to “Joe Crow”… somehow not as flattering). That’s it: toss these things in the blender with some ice, and fire that baby up. This, then, is where the great blender becomes relevant. If you have one, such as Matt’s Hamilton Beach, after a few minutes all those icy ingredients will smooth out into one fine, slushy, slurpy, heavenly strawberry slurry. If your blender is not quite so great, well, after a few minutes you may have nothing more than some pathetically chipped frozen chunks and that unmistakable eau de motor burn-out. I’m sure you’ll agree that chunky, unblended summer drinks are just about as much of a buzz-kill as sunburn and sand in the bikini.

So that’s it – my purchase this week was summertime joy in a glass. All it took was three simple ingredients, and a guy with a great blender.