It’s hard to speak only of kitchen gad­gets for my “Tool of the Month” post as we get closer to Novem­ber 6 – maybe because at this par­tic­u­lar time in the elec­tion cycle there are so many tools to choose from. There­fore, I think it only appro­pri­ate that I men­tion Mrs. Chuck Nor­ris who applied a por­tion of a 1964 Ronald Rea­gan speech to our cur­rent polit­i­cal dynamic, pur­port­ing that the United States will plunge into “1,000 years of dark­ness” if Pres­i­dent Obama is re-elected. Toward that end, please hang onto your mor­tar and pes­tles, your rolling pins and flints – all won­der­ful kitchen tools that will work great in the new dark ages of the twenty-first century.

How­ever, if you feel that moral­ity, civil­ity and elec­tric­ity will some­how sur­vive the elec­toral process, no mat­ter what the out­come, then I sug­gest an amaz­ingly resource­ful kitchen tool, the grandaddy blender of them all – the Vita-Mix. I know what you’re going to say – they’re ridicu­lously expen­sive, how­ever, this is a case of ‘you get what you pay for.’ This is the machine Jamba Juice uses for their smooth­ies; the device that gives Baskin Rob­bins’ milk shakes their creamy tex­ture. And for the high brow crowd, the Vita-Mix is an offi­cially approved prod­uct of the Culi­nary Insti­tute of Amer­ica.

I got one with two sep­a­rate bowls – one for liq­uids and one for grind­ing flours. Run­ning me a hair north of $500, it has a seven year war­ranty. The model just for liq­uids will set you back around $375 from Costco where we watched a demo man toss in pep­pers, cab­bage, toma­toes, car­rots, corn chips, beans and a few other ingre­di­ents to pro­duce a steam­ing tor­tilla soup. Among other things, you can also make ice cream, sauces, dress­ings, mari­nades, sor­bet and pud­ding. It’s a new toy, so I plan on pro­duc­ing lots of won­der­ful concoctions.

I know it’s a lot to spend, but you’ll love it, plus Christ­mas and Chanukah are just around the cor­ner. And thank God, so is the elec­tion. For the record, I really didn’t mean to take sides, so I’d like to offi­cially apol­o­gize to my mor­tar and pes­tle, my rolling pin and the flint inside my fly-fishing vest. They’re great tools, too.