Blender recommendations?

I am making out a shopping list to get prepared for my upcoming surgery. One of the things I know I will need is a blender for my puree stage. The blender I had recently broke as so many others before it. I'm not as worried about what brand to buy as I am what type...should I get a standard size blender, a handheld stick blender or a personal size smoothie blender? If any post-ops could give me their input on which would be more convenient for our kind of usage I would appreciate it. Thanks!

Hi Frostylost,
I have a blender, Cuisinart, and a food processor. The food processor purees very well, and I use HerbOx bouillon to moisten the food as it tends to be a little dry.  I use my blender for my protein powder shake, vanilla tastes real good, so the answer to your question is: use the standard blender as you can use it for various other things, like chopping ice for your ice Tea, decaffeinated. hope this was helpful.

Glorydayz thanks for the tips! You also helped by reminding me that I do already have a food processor that I could use for my purees so maybe I will just get that compact Cuisinart blender I had my eye on. It looks like it would be perfect for making protein shakes since you can make them right in the included travel mugs. 

I absolutely love my Ninja! It can do anything

So true the Ninjs is the best they sell it at walmart

 The Magic Bullet because you are going to using it frequently to prepare small amounts of food.  With the Magic Bullet you have an assortment of different containers and two blades. The advantage is ease of preparation and clean-up.  It works great for making shakes, pureeing, mixing, blending.  The base takes up only a little counterspace.  The containers have lids that can be used for storage.  Any blender or food processor will do the job, but do you really want to assemble, disassemble, clean and reassemble a food processor when you are only going to be eating half of a baby carrot?

I loved my bullet.  The Ninja had excellent reviews on a tv show I watched (20/20 or one of those shows) but was expensive.  I had the small bullet package and bought it at my local store.

Dawn

I have a bullet too and love it... there is a smaller size ninja for about $50 or you can get the full size one for about $160 I started with the smaller Ninja and upgraded.. nothing will crush ice as well...

 I love my Ninja! It is by far the best blender I have ever owned. I bought mine at Kohl's with a 20% off coupon.

I've owned a lot of blenders over the years, and none of them have worked as well as my stick blenders.  I have both a Cuisinart and an Oster (had one at work and one at home but, now that I'm retired, they're both here).  They chop through ice and grind everything so smoothly.  I'm never going back to the pitcher-type blender again.