The Two Appliances A Registered Dietitian Uses for Nutritious Homemade Meals

“With my Blendtec, I use it for so many different things because it can be used for lots of different things, whether that be to make homemade peanut butter or you're making a sauce,” Murnane says. “I also really like to make energy bites or like balance bites. Like the protein, the oats, honey, whatever it is, and I always like to blend my oats. So that's something that I put in my blender is the oats instead of having the like chunky oatmeal in them.”

While there are certainly less expensive blenders that can easily blend your smoothies or sauces, Murnane finds the Blendtec worth its price because she says it gives her the smoother consistency she prefers compared with other blenders she’s used. 

“It's really getting that consistency of the smoothness that I like to have in a lot of my stuff versus the chunkiness,” she says. During soup season, she’ll also use the blender to make sure it has the consistency she wants. 

As a mother, there is one thing Murnane wishes she could change about this appliance: the noise levels. 

“There's definitely been mornings where my son is sleeping and I've gone out into our patio because I have an outlet out there,” she says, “because I don't want to wake him up.” 

The KitchenAid Stand Mixer is widely used by bakers to make cakes or knead doughs at high speeds, but the various attachments available for each model can make it a great choice for those looking to expand their culinary repertoire.

“You can make fresh ice cream with it with the ice cream attachment,” Murnane says. “You can make fresh pasta with it. You can make your own sausages with it. So there's so many different things that you can use with it.” 

One of her standard recommendations is to toss cooked chicken into the mixing bowl and use one of the attachments to create your own pulled chicken that can be used in dishes like burritos. 

“That's definitely a time saver hack for a lot of people,” she says. 

Similar to the Blendtec, the KitchenAid stand mixer may not be the best thing to use if you have a sleeping child nearby. 

“The KitchenAid is pretty loud as well,” she adds. 

On the bright side, both appliances and their respective attachments can be thrown into the dishwasher for easy cleanup. 

“I really only use products that I can put in my dishwasher for that time saving piece,” Murnane says.