kinda OT, but do you like your blender?

Sorry about the slightly off-topic, but I know most veg*ns need, use & love their blender and was hoping someone might have a story to share.

My blender IS working just fine... for now, so this isn't an urgent emergency or anything. It's more of a preventative browsing.

I use my blender about 5-6 times per week. Not quite daily, but pretty close. I use it for crumbing ingredients, crushing ice & making smoothies, making paper-pulp, blending cream soups, and just about everything else imaginable. This is my 3rd blender in 14 years, so I'm not exactly gentle on them. The first burnt out because we'd bought the cheapest one and it couldn't handle pureeing baby food. The second burnt out halfway through blending lily-leaves to make paper... which was really quite a bit to expect of the poor thing. My third one is a 14-speed "Osterizer" and it seems to be doing okay, (I'm not about to use this one for fresh-leaf paper!) but it gets sluggish or stops blending & just free-spins when I try to blend too many GF waffles at once, or when I expect it to blend ice, banana and strawberries all together without adding things one bitty piece at a time.

I can't afford a Vita-Mix, much as I know I'd use & love one. So I guess I'm looking for something out there that can handle just about anything WITHOUT the super-scary pricetag of the Vita-Mix. There's one at Target that seems to have really good reviews on Amazon.com - it's THIS one by Kitchen Aid. Does anyone know if that's a good brand? Or if there's another one out there for quite a bit less than $500 that can handle a blender-killer?
love,
mom

 

i've never been completely satisfied with my blender.