Ninja Professional: A Fancy Smoothie Machine

When I was a kid, I grew up in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. In 90’s, when my family packed up and moved away, the neighborhood was becoming very rough with drugs. These days I hear it is turning around, although I haven’t been there in years. Anyway, I digress…

I can remember a time when I was young and my family only had one car. My father used to use it for work and it would leave the remainder of the family on foot. Sometimes during the summer months we would walk to the local grocery store. An Acme located in Harrogate Shopping Center.

Before going in to shop for groceries, we would sometimes visit other stores in the shopping center. There was a diner on the far end where we might get breakfast, then we would sometimes stop into the Crazy Eddie’s electronics store.

I vaguely remember the store itself but I remember the weird TV commercials and the mocking references friends and family used to make about the store. If you aren’t familiar with Crazy Eddie’s, it was a discount electronics chain that was very popular in the Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey areas.

Anyway, I tell you that story because the one I’m going to tell you now has a vague tie-in…

About six weeks ago I woke up on a Saturday morning. I was terribly hungry but had no desire to head down to the kitchen and begin cooking. So, I rolled over, gently woke up my wife (who is not a morning person – not even a little bit) and asked if she wanted to go out for breakfast.

To my amazement, she said yes. Before long, myself, my wife, and our daughter were heading out the door. We decided to skip the local diner and try a place a little farther away from home. Because I am a creature of habit, I know that I probably had creamed chipped beef, home fries, and a side order of toast (because they provide so much cream chipped beef that the extra toast is necessary).

I don’t know what everyone else had but we all left the diner with a full stomach. I pitched the idea that we head down the road a little farther and check out the local flea market. I used to go there with my parents when I was younger and it was a good excuse to walk off some of the calories we had just packed on.

It has become a routine of sorts. Every other week we will go out to breakfast on a Saturday or Sunday. Afterwards we will go for a walk around the flea market. Our daughter will keep an eye out for something fun to play with, my wife will keep an eye out for a deal on something for around the house, and I’ll scoff at the rusty and usually overpriced tools.

One day, while on our way back to the car, we came across a building with the words ‘Overstocked’ advertised. Unlike most of the other vendors, this was a permanent fixture being run as a store. They seemed to sell a little bit of everything but his featured items were discounted items ‘As Seen on QVC’.

I stopped at looked at the $149 blender on sale for $85 and was tempted. I recognized the brand, knew someone that loved theirs, but I was skeptical. Would I be buying some factory reject that couldn’t be sold for full price? Was this guy just a modern age Crazy Eddie’s?

We left without the blender but it weighed on my mind. It was an impressive deal and I had second thoughts, should I have taken the gamble and bought the blender? We needed one, our current blender makes an awful smoothie.

A couple of weeks later we were back at the flea market and the blenders were gone. In their place were some other QVC sale items. I was kicking myself at this point, apparently the deal was so good that they sold out. Maybe I should have just pulled the trigger on the blender.

On Sunday our daughter was with her Grand Parents and my wife and I took advantage of the quiet time together. We went out for breakfast together then took a walk around the flea market. We came across a Ninja Sword for $1 and promptly purchased it for our daughter (best $1 I ever spent, she practically sleeps with it under her pillow and is forever Ninja Chopping imaginary bad guys).

On the way out, we stopped at the Overstocked building and took a look around. This time another ‘As Seen on QVC” item caught my eye. It was a Ninja Professional marked down from $89 to $45. Unlike a traditional blender, this one was geared towards single serving items (smoothies, margaritas, etc).

After talking to the business owner, we were informed that his ‘Partners at QVC sold him these items at a discount because they didn’t come with retail packaging’. Everything was there, minus the recipe book and shiny box, so I handed over cash and walked out with a Maroon 1000 Watt Ninja Professional Blender.

I’ve used the blender a couple of times now and it is impressive. It simply annihilates rock-solid frozen fruit and makes one hell of a smoothie. Only time will tell if it was worth the gamble but so far I’m happy with it.

I suppose now that I have a fancy new Ninja Professional Blender, I’m going to need some recipes to go along with it. What are some of your favorite protein packed smoothies?