Cookaholics Bulletin Board

One of the presets is for cleaning. You put a bit of soap and half fill with water. It runs at different speeds for a predetermined amount of time and is perfectly clean at the end. When I've done it manually there are sometimes bits of stuff on the blade or the sides. We are drying the container immediately for now, though I am sure that will stop with time. Steve says the smoothie present works perfectly as well. I've not tried the others yet.

Costco.ca has the vitamix turbo blend on sale - this deal looks awesome to me but it's only 2 speeds. Should I hold out for the variable or maybe consider a blendtec at a similar price point to this machine?
http://www.costco.ca/Vitamix-TurboBlend ... 84641.html

Variable speed. It is a huge boon.

I did not think we would use all the speeds, but we have. The clean up one is a blessing. It really cleans it. I would spend the extra bucks and get the variable speed. I found Williams Sonoma sale to be the best price.

It is the super slow start allowed by the variable speed, that stops the stuff from blasting up the sides that is so wonderful.

Thanks! (and drat all at the same time)

I posted this yesterday but dang if I can find it

Follow this link and then scroll to the bottom to see great deals from the factory on reconditioned models (with 5 year warranty instead of 7:
https://www.vitamix.com/shop/C-Series.aspx

I had to use their waranty after thre years and they were perfect!

Also, call their representative, JP, who is bilingual (F/E) and handles all Canadian stuff. Great guy and he may know of other deals.
1-800-848-2649

See, I know stuff besides wine

I love my pro-750 with the presets. I didn't think I'd use them, but I love being able to walk away and do something else while it does its thing. I've done daily green smoothies for the past 2 years that way, and it works great. The slow start chops things up and avoids the need for the tamper, and it has the added benefit of keeping the lid clean. The clean cycle is nice too. I don't tend to use the purée or soup cycles though. The purée cycle (and I hate to say this) almost makes things a bit too smooth for my taste. I did a cauliflower purée and actually missed the texture that I get with my immersion blender. And for soup, I'm weird but would rather use my stove to heat things up. I've used the frozen cycle once or twice, but I don't use mine for making frozen treats much. I've gotten lazy and rarely go manual now. The only thing I've needed to use the tamper for has been hummus, and when making frozen yogurt with yogurt and frozen fruit. Everything else just gets sucked in.

I got mine here: http://www.aviva.ca. They are local, but ship across Canada. Williams food equipment is another place I've ordered from, and has reasonable prices for the Canadian market: http://www.williamsfoodequipment.ca/shop-by-brand/vitamix.html. I got a good deal on a smaller wet blending jar from them. Costco.ca also sells the grain jar sometimes for an amazingly low price. All of the older style jars will still fit the wide jar style that comes with the newer models.

Thanks Wino and Carey. I think I'm going to wait to pull the trigger here. I'm going to wait a bit on this, a few reasons (money being a big one!) and hope to get it later in the year.