I'm not this crunchy, really.

So the other night, I'm in the kitchen (of course, why would I want to be anywhere else?) and Darel comes in and says, "Honey, I've been thinking."

"Okay."

"About how much trash we make."

"Me, too!" We embrace. No, we don't. Actually, I stop what I'm doing because I've been thinking about this very thing. I honestly cringe when I throw out a #4 or #5 container that our great city does not recycle. All I can think about is the smelly, disgusting city dumps that I used to pass every day on the way to school and how the filthy sea gulls circled over the piles of trash. And how one city dump got filled up and they turned it into a ski slope. We called it Mount Trashmore.

"We throw out a lot of yogurt containers," he says.

"I was thinking the SAME THING!" We embrace. "What would you think if I tried to make our own yogurt?"

"You can do that?"

Did he really just say that? Is he challenging me?

"In the crockpot. While we sleep." We are still embracing. This is getting fun.

But the thing is, you don't really make yogurt. Yogurt makes itself, while you sleep. I used local milk, no packaging, and no multi-syllabic additives. There are literally 2 ingredients: a whole lot of milk, and a little bit of store-bought (or previously-made yogurt). Does it get any easier?

Here's the recipe.

The next day, we experimented with add-ins. For sweetness, we gravitated toward jams. Darel liked the blueberry. I preferred the strawberry. The offspring still needs convincing. We finished up a bunch of it this morning in a smoothie-style lassi, the idea for which I found in a fun book "Too Many Cooks" that was recommended to me by this fun friend.

Overall, a big thumbs up from this kitchen junkie, but time will tell if this inexpensive, super healthy, green (as in eco) alternative makes its way into our weekly list of must haves.

I remember that a friend once said that she was so crunchy that she knits her own yogurt. Because I have, on occasion, been known to knit, does this recent yogurt event push me into the crunchy category?

Update: click here to see Kristy's commentary of her community's creative management of waste.