Kitchen equipement question

[The French One]

Hello!

Being a new raw foodist, I have only bought a (cheap) blender for the moment, which I only use to make smoothies (Cheap blender, because I wanted to be sure to be able to stay raw before investing more, but now, I feel sure of myself).

As I've been watching all the recipes around, it seems that a food processor would have been much more powerful. For instance, with my blender, I have to slice in very little cubes any piece of vegetable I want to put in it but what annoys me most with my blender is that I always have to put water in the preparation (so, no raw cake for me for instance).

So, would a Vitamix blender do the trick or shall I invest in a food processor. Are they both able to chop almonds or other hard nuts/ entire fruits/ etc and that without adding liquid?

Need your great wisdom here. You can even give me references, since I'm sure I'll end up buying new equipment.

[raweater]

A blender is more more liquid blends while a food processor is mostly for solid/dry mixes or to chop items. A smoothie done in a food processor would come out very gritty and you are very limited in how much liquid you can put (I think my 14 cup processor can only handle a maximum of 3 cups of liquid) because the lid is not sealed so the liquid has to stay below the top of the lid.

So you really need both if you want to make both solid blends like nut pates and liquid blends like smoothies.

[juliebove]

I don't personally like smoothies but I do make them sometimes for my daughter. I do them in the Magic Bullet. Of course it makes rather small ones.

I use my food processor a lot. It's a cheap one. Hamilton Beach Big Mouth. I use it mainly for doing things like chopping onions and celery and for slicing vegetables like tomatoes. Saves me a LOT of time from having to chop it by hand.

For nuts and seeds, I also use the Magic Bullet.

I do have an old blender, but never seem to need to use it. I also have an immersion blender. It was cheap too and works well for larger quantities of liquids.

[spicyfull]

I would invest in a Vita-Mix, a Juicer and a Food Processor. The Vita-Mix is the most expensive and the Food Processor is the Cheapest.

[The French One]

Thank you all for the answers, it's much clearer now to me. Looks like I have some well-placed investment to do.