The blender's actually been sitting quietly in the kitchen for months and months. Then one day I made a smoothie, and since then it's been used - by myself and my flatmate - every single day.

Wow, I've got my shopping list for the weekend sorted.

You should be sticking that stuff in a Mortar and Pestle, not a blender.

bashing the hell out of it is better - more surface area exposed, rougher separation of fibres - blender just makes neat little cuts everywhere and the flavour is (miniscule-ly) less. like the difference between slicing garlic (which is pretty) and crushing it (MORE garlic flavour, it travels further and gets it on with other ingredients). i guess it's all about releasing the oils of stuff. think about how stuff would look under a microscope if you use a blender (cuts between the particles), and if you bashed it (particles bashed).

//a whole new topic on garlic

haha. of all the silly little "selection" criteria I've ever jokingly made, I've broken all of them (no blondes, no vegetarians etc.), but I've never dated anyone who doesn't love garlic. On the other hand, if a person didn't like garlic, I can't imagine she'd be game to kiss me. haha.

Cheap imitation Baileys like Canterbury Cream (or the real stuff) plus a little ice cream, vodka and milk. Add Kahlua type liquor, or butterscotch/toffee/caramel schnaps and blend away. Mmm breakfast!

Oh, and while this is a cut'n paste from hubris, another good blender-requiring drinking thing is Pear Brandy Champagne Cocktails:

Bring to the boil one cup sugar and two cups water, until the sugar is all melted. If you want a more caramelly flavour, use brown sugar. Allow to cool a little.

Pour syrup into a blender with one can of pears-in-juice. Blend until liquidy and smooth. Add in a cup of brandy and half a cup of apple juice and blend again. Pour into a bottle and chill for an hour.

Fill a champagne flute one third full with pear mixture and top up with bubbly. Oooh sophisticated AND fruity!

(Please to feel free to use any other kinds of fruit - pears go particularly well with blue cheese pear tarts, however. Later in the afternoon we ran out of pearbrandy mix and so I made up more using frozen blueberries that was just as good).

[ http://hubris.co.nz/entry.php?type=5 ]

A lot of Baileys and icecream with a little milk and one or two icecubes... Ooooooohhhh my god.....

so you just soak the chick peas you don't cook them??????? bouns!!!
garlic roasted or raw?

[good to see you on the boards again!]

i just soak em overnight - cooking them gets rid of flavour (though you can add some of the cooking water, not much or bad things happen, besides the hummus being runny) ... i like the hotness of raw garlic, hadn't thought of roasted - that would be very yummy - slightly sweet and nutty. so many good mental images/tastes/sensations today. i love being a professional idealist ...

Hmmm. i'll definitely have to try chickpeas raw. Man I luuuurve roast garlic. Every time we have a roast, we now need to put in TWO bulbs of garlic, so that we can have one each!! Which is of course in addition to all the garlic that's usually rubbed over/in the roast itself.

Heh, that was the first thing that popped into my head when I saw the topic.

I did wonder how many frog / Kermit mixture comments I was going to get.

Do you have a version that the lactose intolerant could use?

then put aforementioned vodka-lemon into hole in watermelon, leave overnight, and voila! doubly potent (if a tad rotten) vodka-lemon-melon!!!

can i have some? pleeeeeease?

you forgot the dash of red wine . . . . .