I have enjoyed my Vita-Mix for over 20 years. It is a quality built machine. I have the old, commercial stainless steel one. I remember when the new plastic one came out and watched it demonstrated at Costco.
Though I do like my machine, it is very costly to replace parts on it, but you can get it fixed or buy the parts and buy accessories or cook-books to it from the company. My machine is currently needing a new seal by the blades (since it is leaking), so I use it mostly for any dry items or very thick batters now and it works just fine for that.
My favorite all-time things I've made in this are my scratch chocolate cream pie, re-fried beans and oat flour made from oatmeal. The machine was advertised as a one machine does it all, but I did not find it so. Yes you can do very many different things in it, but it is very good at some things, but not all. I didn't like it for: grinding cheese, bread dough, chopping meat, juicing and making hot soups directly in it. I did like it for a basic blender function, taking whole grains to flour, breaking down pumpkin fibers for recipes and re-fried beans and turning my dried purple cone flower seed heads or my dried spearmint leaves into tea. But I loved it for making my cooked chocolate pudding pie recipe that I'm known for. Just plan on replacing seals for the lid, spout, and base blade and handle every few years and then you should be content with it.
I first saw this machine sitting on my Grandmother's counter. Then I saw my aunt also had one and asked her about it. She found hers used and was watching for others. I placed a free ad in my city's newspaper to buy one. After research on this machine, people recommended having a second blender container top part. Some preferred not having the spout unless you wanted to make ice cream or in my case so I could dispense hot pie filling into the crust. The spout also came in real handy for ice cream as when I lived in Thailand only a couple of choices for ice cream were in the stores in a population of about a half to one million people. So I was able to buy all these used pieces at a very good price, since the new ones were way out of my budget. I later added a new cookbook and a wooden tamper tool and seals bought from the company. The most difficult part of having this machine was cleaning the spout.
Oat Flour
Fill the canister to about 3/4 full of dry, old fashioned oatmeal. Place lid on top and fasten the clasps into place. Turn machine on Start, #1. Press the red lever button down for about 30 seconds. Add more time if you wish for finer flour. You can use the tamper if necessary to move the flour from the edge of the container. Angle it to the sides in a circle direction. Now this is ready for any recipe you want to use oat flour in.
