A Waldorf Home - Homemade Frozen Yogurt

This may seem a bit off topic for this blog, but as Vata tends to be my dominant dosha, that should come as no surprise!  The past few months, I've been trying to incorporate some more Waldorf methods into our daily lives.  As I've mentioned before, the Waldorf philosophy is big on having the child participate in the daily chores in the household.  There is also a strong preference for allowing the child to do these activities "by hand," or at least without the use of electricity.  I just watched How to Cook Your Life with Zen master Edward Espe Brown (and I hope to write more about that later), and in this documentary, the famous chef shows his students how to knead bread.  In the midst of his teachings, he talks about how our modern society does everything by computer or electronically and miss out on doing activities by hand.  When we engage in activities, like kneading bread, all those wonderful acupressure and acupuncture points in our hand are stimulated and make us feel alive!  I instantly got the connection to the Waldorf philosophy and their desire to do things by hand.  So, keeping this all in mind the past few months, I've incorporated some changes into our routine.


Now, don't get me wrong.  You don't have to move to a monastery or totally give up your life as you know it.  You can start simply, and make small modifications, according to Heaven on Earth author Sharifa Oppenheimer. If you always use the dishwasher, wash dishes by hand once a week and involve your child.  This is one of A.J.'s favorite activities!  He loves to stand in his Learning Tower and play in the water while we wash dishes together. He loves the bubbles that the dish soap makes and squeezing out the sponge. (Warning: If they are like, A.J. they will splash everywhere, so keep a towel handy!). 

In order to help incorporate Aidan into the vacuuming of the floors, I purchased a carpet sweeper for $20 from Amazon.com.  It has an adjustable handle, of sorts, so it's just his size.  He loves to push it and it actually does better at picking things up than our electric vacuum cleaner.  I also purchased a child sized broom for him to "help" me sweep with.  One of his favorite things to do is "help me!"

Around the same time that I purchased the carpet sweeper, I stumbled upon a Donvier non-electric ice cream maker at the thrift store and immediately snatched it up!  It was $4.99 and they retail for $60!  Although it was January, I knew that this would be another excellent tool to help us implement this part of the Waldorf philosophy into our lives. 

When the weather warmed up this past week, I decided it was warm enough to dust off the ice cream maker and make some frozen yogurt.  I found a recipe book for the ice cream maker online, since it didn't come with one.  I modified one of the recipes a bit, and made tropical frozen yogurt in 20 minutes.

Tropical Frozen Yogurt:

Ingredients:
1 10-oz. package tropical fruit mix (I used Woodstock Farms Organic Tropic Mix with bananas, mangoes, and strawberries)
1 1/2 cups plain yogurt (I used Stonyfield Farms)
1/8 cup agave nectar

Preparation:
Thaw fruit mix.  Add to blender and puree.  Mix in yogurt and agave nectar.  Pour into ice cream maker. Turn crank several times every 2-3 minutes until it becomes difficult to turn the crank.

This is such a fun tool to use, as it doesn't require ice or salt!   Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of us making the frozen yogurt or A.J. and his friend eating it.  But they LOVED it!  The picture above is A.J. playing with the ice cream maker the day we bought it.  He loves to play with it and thinks it's a "screw-dryer" (Translation: screwdriver).