Lecture on Our Only Business is to Love Krishna by HH Mahavishnu Swami on 29 Dec 1995 at Radhadesh
(His Holiness Mahavishnu Swami appeared in this world on 10 February 1945, in Birmingham, UK. He entered the Bath Academy of Art at age 19, and graduated with honours in Fine Arts.)
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I am happy to announce to all devotees the forthcoming publication of a new cookbook series, The Kitchen Religion Series, Quantity Cooking for the Krishna Kitchen, a set of four volumes of quantity cooking cookbooks, by Kitchen Religion Books. This is a never done before effort to provide quantity cooking recipes for prasadam distribution to the worldwide devotee community in a format that will facilitate cooking from 10 – 1,000 people. Thus, the series is also subtitled, For Family Gatherings to Large Festivals.
Each of the four volumes focuses on one food category (vegetables, rice, soups and dahls), and the fourth will be the highlight of the set with 108 halava flavors that will make a devotee out of every bite. The cookbooks also include extensive quoting from Srila Prabhupada on the subject of prasadam, Cooking Tips and Notes, a Kitchen Standards document, and a Metric Equivalent Chart.
The series will be available in 2014 with the first book on quantity rice cooking coming out in January. However, they are available for pre-order at a 15% discount online at the Kitchen Religion Books website, www.kitchenreligionbooks.com.
Below is the Introduction from the rice cookbook with many anecdotes, instructions and stories about prasadam, the secret weapon of the Hare Krishna Movement.
This cookbook series, “The Kitchen Religion Series, Quantity Cooking for the Krishna Kitchen,” is an idea whose time has come. As Srila Prabhupada once said, quoting the oft-repeated phrase, “Variety is the spice of life.” This series will offer that “spice” for the quantity Krishna Kitchen cooks who lack sufficient selections in their menu-making efforts. And it also provides quantity recipes in an organized written format with flow charts of ingredient proportions with metric equivalents which has never before been done within the Hare Krishna devotee community.
It's also a series that was years in the making, and still continues to be in the making as more recipes are developed. This is the first of several books to be published in the set, each volume focusing on a particular cooking category, drawing recipes from around the world - vegetable dishes, rice, soups/dahls, etc.. It took me about three years to compile and test all the recipes for these cookbooks, and my test subjects were a thousand students a day at the University of Florida's Krishna Lunch program. What started back in 1972 as a “Krishna picnic” on the campus Free Speech area eventually blossomed into a full-blown lunch program that now consistently serves thousands of students healthy and tasty Krishna prasadam all throughout the school year. And I was their cook from 2008-11.
Aside from quantity cooking, the ingredient charts will also offer the recipes with proportions to facilitate cooking for as little as ten people making this cookbook series also appealing for use by families and Deity cooks alike. Thus, it is aptly sub-titled, “For Family Gatherings to Large Festivals.”
What about the name, the “Kitchen Religion Series”? How did I come up with that? This phrase, “Kitchen Religion,” was used by His Divine Grace Srila Prabhupada to describe the Krishna consciousness movement. One reason is because prasadam was and still is our “secret weapon,” as he called it, against maya, illusion, in our attempts to wake up the forgetful conditioned souls. He even referred to gulabjamuns, those tasty, juicy, spongy, sweet, rose-flavored milk balls that are an all- time favorite of devotees, as “ISKCON Bullets.” And in our personal fight against maya, prasadam plays perhaps the most important role in keeping us devotees. I think all of us will attest to this fact.
Prasadam is so important in the lives of devotees. We understand and have faith that it is spiritual food and can change one's consciousness because it is non-different from Krishna. It's the remnants of His meal, laced with the sweetness from being touched by His transcendental lips, and therefore we are not exactly eating food, but respecting Krishna in the form of food. Thus it is said that we are honoring prasadam. And Srila Prabhupada, citing the scientific fact that every seven years all the cells of our body are replaced with new ones, used to say that one who eats Krishna prasadam every day will have a “prasadam body” in seven years.
Krishna consciousness is also called the kitchen religion because food is so important even in the spiritual world. Srimati Radharani is known for never making the same preparation twice (except perhaps for a number of Sri Krishna's favorites), and the extraordinary feasts during Lord Caitanya's time played an extremely important role in His lilas. All devotees have also relished hearing the wonderful pastimes of Krishna as the butter thief and having lunch with his cowherd boyfriends while tending the calves and cows in the forests and pastures of Vrindaban. Such food related pastimes are an essential part of the spiritual world.
Prasadam and its distribution also play an important role in the performance of Vedic yajnas, wherein the sacrifice is not considered complete without the distribution of sanctified foods. Vedic grhasthas must also distribute prasadam on a daily basis as a religious duty by calling out to the general public, “If anyone is hungry, please come and eat,” before having their own meals. And Lord Krishna Himself stresses the importance of eating food first offered for sacrifice in the Bhagavad-gita (3.13).
The kitchen is also known as the extension of the altar and as Radharani's favorite room, wherein several opulent meals are prepared for the deities every day without fail. At the Jagannatha Puri Temple in Orissa, Lord Jagannatha, Baladeva, and Subhadra get 56 food offerings a day. The standards of cleanliness and punctuality, the two most important elements of Deity worship, are also part and parcel of all kitchen services. Srila Prabhupada said that the sign of a brahmin cook is that he or she leaves the kitchen cleaner than they found it. And he also instructed that “cooking means cleaning.” One of the verses we sing daily when worshiping the spiritual master describes how he offers Krishna four varieties of delicious foods and that he is satisfied just to see his disciples honoring Krishna prasadam. The plain fact is that Krishna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, enjoys eating and therefore, Krishna consciousness, on one level, is a food-based spiritual process; we cook for Krishna's pleasure with love and devotion, and He returns His remnants to us out of love for His devotees. Thus, it really is indeed the kitchen religion.
The Hare Krishna Sunday Feast, originally named the Sunday Love Feast by Srila Prabhupada, is a mainstay of all ISKCON centers worldwide and plays a most important role in the kitchen religion concept. When I joined the Hare Krishna Movement in 1971 at the New York temple on Henry Street in Brooklyn, a normal Sunday Feast would consist of two vegetable preps (one always with curd chunks, fried or plain), fancy rice, dahl, pakoras or samosas, bharas in tomato or yogurt sauce, chutney, gulabjamuns or lugloos, halava, sweet rice and a nectar drink. These were spectacular feasts all prepared with ghee, butter, curd, and yogurt just as Srila Prabhupada taught us. No oil or tofu back then. Only “liquid religiosity,” as he referred to dairy products. He specifically referred to milk as “the miracle food for children and old men” and as a most important food that nourishes the finer brain tissues that aid in understanding spiritual concepts. And, after all, Krishna's favorite animal is the cow and her dairy products are His favorite foodstuff. He likes butter so much that He even steals it because He can't get enough of it at home, and then He shares it with the monkeys. Therefore, as Srila Prabhupada taught, if we love Krishna it behooves us to offer Him what He likes best. He gave the example that if the master asks for a glass of water you don't bring him milk thinking it's better than water.
Bhaktivinoda das used to stay up all night cooking the 50 gallons of sweet rice for the New York Sunday Feasts, narrowly escaping falling into the boiling milk pot during bouts of nodding out. The samosa filling was true to the original cauliflower- pea recipe taught by Srila Prabhupada wherein the cauliflower and peas are cooked to a paste-like consistency, an extremely time consuming feat for large quantities, what to speak of the additional time it took to form the samosas and fry them. But material time was irrelevant. We wanted to offer the best to Sri Sri Radha Govinda, the Lords of the Henry Street temple. And everyone who honored Their Lordship's prasadam could taste the love and devotion that went into these sumptuous (a word Srila Prabhupada used, meaning “large and lavish”) feasts. This was the kitchen religion at its best.
Most temples had similar menus, and the feast was the highlight of the week for the temple devotees and the clincher for guests and aspiring devotees to give their lives to Srila Prabhupada and his mission. It's also a well known historical fact that devotees became famous not just for their street sankirtan, but also for their food. And perhaps vegetarianism itself may not have caught on so well if it weren't for prasadam.
I learned to cook at the Henry Street temple from the original Hare Krishna cookbook (available on the VedaBase) and a few mentors like Apurva das, Visnugada das and Mangalananda das. Eventually I became the cook on one of the Radha-Damodar traveling sankirtan buses and even received a cooking lesson or two from the celebrated Vishnujana Swami on how to make his famous strawberry malpuras, a flat, oval-shaped version of the usual ball-shaped confections that are soaked in fruit-flavored yogurt. He would make these for all the devotees to enliven them as a reward when they returned from book distribution.
The Radha-Damodar Traveling Sankirtan Party (RDTSKP) feasts were literally from another world. We would have gulabjamun eating contests that entailed catching gulabjamuns in your mouth that were thrown to you, and it wasn't uncommon for a devotee to ingest 50-60 gulabjamuns in one sitting in an effort to win the competition. I remember once making gulabjamuns from a recipe I got from an Indian cookbook. Instead of powdered milk they were made of boiled sweet potatoes mashed and rolled into balls, stuffed with milk fudge (burfi), fried in ghee, and soaked in sugar water. Devotees talked about these heavenly delights for years.
The concept of Hare Krishna restaurants, so very important to the kitchen religion ideology, also originated with Srila Prabhupada and was a unique and modern way to distribute prasadam. I helped develop and cooked for the now famous Kalachandji's Restaurant in Dallas which opened in 1982 and was rated by The Dallas Morning News as one of the top 10 restaurants to open that year. By 1987 it had become so popular that the Vegetarian Times magazine rated it one of the Top Ten vegetarian restaurants in the United States. An average weekend night would draw up to 150 people in the span of 4 hours, and there would be a waiting line that extended out the front door of the temple and onto the sidewalk. It was the talk of the town attracting both the well-to-do of Dallas along with the regular vegetarian crowd, and all the local print media carried glowing reviews of our vegetarian fare.
An offshoot of Kalachandji's was Magic Lotus Catering, which catered touring vegetarian (and sometimes non-vegetarian) musicians and bands that came to Dallas. This also grew dramatically, and many a traveling rock star received Kalachandji's mercy in the form of the kitchen religion's secret weapon, prasadam. The list of celebrities included George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Frank Zappa, B.B. King, Todd Rundgren, Ozzie Ozborn, Kenny G., Eric Johnson, Rush, Boston, The Kinks, REM, The Eurythmics, The Pretenders, Culture Club and a host of others, including the legendary Tiny Tim. Additionally, Magic Lotus Catering traveled with one of the first Lollapalooza music tours, setting up food vendor stalls at about 35 shows during the summer of 1992.
However, my most memorable and spiritually inspiring cooking experience was cooking once for Srila Prabhupada. It was in the summer of 1976 that Srila Prabhupada came to New York for the first New York Rathayatra. Simultaneously, he also took the opportunity to go for a visit to the Gita Nagari farm in Pennsylvania. The Radha-Damodar bus managed by Mahamuni das, on which I was the cook, was there at the time, and it was decided that he go to Gita Nagari in the bus, and I was to be his cook. However, Srila Prabhupada was exhibiting a pastime of being sick with a cold, and I was told to limit the meal to fruit only. The bus sped off at 4am the next day with Srila Prabhupada and his entourage, and after mangal arati and japa I was told to prepare the fruit for serving after Srimad-Bhagavatam class.
The fruit was served out, but at this point Srila Prabhupada made an unusual request; he wanted pakoras. And not just your common pakoras either. He wanted whole-green-chili pakoras! Not being prepared for this, I only managed to locate a single head of cauliflower, mixed up a batch of the original Hare Krishna Cookbook pakora batter (my favorite batter recipe) and began to fry the pakoras (in ghee, of course) while speeding along the highway at 65 miles an hour. Batch by batch the pakoras were brought out to Srila Prabhupada, who continued to request more. As most cooks know, one head of cauliflower can make a considerable number of small pakoras, probably enough to feed about five average hungry devotees. In the end, Srila Prabhupada had consumed the entire head's worth of cauliflower pakoras. It was like a lila out of Caitanya- caritamrta, and I was a part of it. Later I was introduced to Srila Prabhupada as the cook, and he nodded and approved with a big smile. I had pleased my spiritual master with this simple service.
Besides the recipes, my intention is to also make this series educational and informative. Thus, aside from the recipes and interesting and instructive anecdotes and stories in this Introduction, the reader/cook will also find a detailed document of Kitchen Standards, practical and usable cooking tips, relevant quantity charts, and inspiring quotes from Srila Prabhupada about prasadam. It is also provided in the form of a workbook, with room for notes and quantity/ingredient adjustments so that any cook in any part of the world, whether at home or at a temple, whether cooking for 10 or 1,000, can utilize the variety of recipes contained herein. As a side note, I recommend all serious cooks read the pages titled Cooking Tips and General Notes before doing anything.
Overall, this cookbook series is an offering to Srila Prabhupada and the devotees in general to give further inspiration for prasadam distribution worldwide and strengthen our forces against the onslaught of Kali-yuga. It represents 40+ years of cooking experience for Deities, for the masses and for everyone in-between. And as this volume is solely about rice, future volumes will provide hundreds of quantity recipes for vegetable dishes, soups and dahls, etc., with my supreme offering to the Krishna cooks of the world being The Great 108 Halava Flavors Cookbook. May all who read this series be pleased and bless me with ongoing inspiration to help Srila Prabhupada push on this great Kitchen Religion.
Sunanda das
maha-prasade govinde nama-brahmani vaisnave
sv-alpa-punya-vatam rajan visvaso naiva jayate
“Persons who are not very highly elevated in pious activities cannot believe in the remnants of food offered to the Supreme Personality of Godhead, nor in Govinda, nor in the holy name of the Lord, nor in the Vaisnavas.”
Many devotees are now hearing about a new cinematic production underway by the husband and wife team of Yadubara das and Visakha dasi of ISKCON Cinema, producers of the well-known documentaries, The Hare Krishna People, Your Ever Well-Wisher and the Following Srila Prabhupada series. The new documentary is called ACHARYA – One Who Teaches by Example, a biographical overview of the life and teachings of ISKCON Founder-Acharya, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. ISKCON Cinema, in association with the Vedic Community Foundation (VCF) will produce the documentary film, a 90 minute, broadcast quality, HDTV production.
There is an urgent need for an updated, revised film on Srila Prabhupada with language and imagery appropriate for 21st century viewers. Its specific purpose will be to present Srila Prabhupada to the greater worldwide audience in an effort to educate them as to the power and authenticity of this great acharya who opened the path of Krishna consciousness to the world.
To produce ACHARYA, ISKCON Cinema will join forces with media professionals in the Washington DC area. Financial backing will come from supporters, followers and well-wishers around the world who have witnessed and experienced the positive influence of Srila Prabhupada’s teachings. The deadline for release is September, 2015, the 50th anniversary of Srila Prabhupada’s arrival on the shores of America. The film will be offered to major networks such as Showtime, Discovery, the History Channel and other quality network channels worldwide.
The producers are also looking for people to interview for the film. One category is persons who met Srila Prabhupada, especially in the early days in the U.S., and also in India. Another is influential and important people worldwide who were positively influenced in some way by Srila Prabhupada's spiritual power and teachings. (They may or may not have met Srila Prabhupada.) We request all devotees worldwide who know of any such persons to please email their contact information to Sunanda das at acharyathemovie@gmail.com.
For more information about the ACHARYA film go to www.acharyathemovie.com
Recent pictures capture the progress of construction on two important parts of the new temple.
They showcase the headway being made in the South West corner. The staircase tower is moving forward as the shuttering of form work is being done. The next layer is concrete with the following layer will being the blue tiles. The planetarium wing is also making great strides in it’s momentum. One final ring needs to be done at which point the construction of the dome will commence.
There is still much to be done to complete the super-structure, but the on-going development is both exciting and encouraging.
Lecture on Prayer means to glorify not to ask for by Vedavyasapriya Swami on 05 Nov 2013 at ISKCON Melbourne
(Vedavyasapriya Swami worked as a research biochemist first in East Africa and then later when he migrated to USA. Within a week of arrival in the USA, he met the devotees, disciples of His Divine Grace, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Srila Prabhupada)
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Lecture on Vengence and Forgiveness by Urmila Mataji on 14 Sept 2013 at Hawaii
(Her Grace Urmila Devi Dasi was born in 1955 in New York City. She joined ISKCON in 1973 in Chicago. She received first initiation in 1973 and second initiation in 1975 from His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.)
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Lecture on Goal of Life by HH Romapada Swami on 27 Oct 2013 at Hyderabad
(Romapada Swami‘s first encounter with Krishna consciousness came in Buffalo, in the shape of a lecture at the State University of New York in 1969. The lecturer was His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.)
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Lecture on Should One Offer Obeisances to Deities During Class or Kirtan by HH Bhakti Vikasa Swami on 04 June 2013 at Vallabh Vidyanagar
(From 1977 to 1979 His Holiness Bhakti Vikasa Swami was based in India, mostly traveling in West Bengal preaching Krishna consciousness and distributing Srila Prabhupada's books.)
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Dear Devotees,
Hare Krishna.
We are sure that you must have already heard the wonderful news regarding our upcoming new temple project in Plainfield NJ. We have found a Church property that is suitable for our temple needs. We are in the process of signing a contract and we expect to close on the deal within 2-3 months.
We are indebted to everyone of you for being a part of our Worldwide ISKCON community for last many Years. We are hopeful that you would continue your heartfelt support by taking an active role in this community building project. Please let us know how you would like to show your support. One way you may want to support is by donating some of your hard-earned laxmi for this temple project. We will make sure that every penny you donate will be spent wisely. Please go through our brochure and see how would you like to serve the needs of your future generations by providing them a Radha-Krishna Cultural Center. Your family will be able to make use of this temple to learn the art of living a wholesome life with a lot of devotee friends who can inspire and guide them to be the best in every sphere of their lives. Please feel free to share this email with your friends and family members.
Please give us a call or you may choose to donate via online.
We have setup a Website www.icnjnewtemple.com and you can chose a secure Donate link on that site to make your offering. After you make an on-line donation please let us know so we can track it.
Hari Bol
Your Servant
Devakinandan das
ISKCON OF CNJ
(917)626-1348
Krsna is the Source of All Pleasures.....
"Chant Hare Krishna and be happy"
Read Biography of Sri Srinivasa Acharya on www.gaudiyahistory.com
Bhajan by Sri Srinivasa Acharya on www.vaishnavsongs.com
Read Biography of Sri Dhananjaya Pandita on www.gaudiyahistory.com
Read Biography of Sri Gadadhara Dasa Goswami on www.gaudiyahistory.com
Read more about Gopastami , Gosthastami on www.harekrishnacalendar.com
Audio Lectures on Gopastami on www.audio.iskcondesiretree.info
Posters of Gopastami on www.images.iskcondesiretree.info
Colouring Books of Gopastami on www.iskcondesiretree.net
Video Lectures on Gopastami on www.iskcondesiretree.net
Srimad Bhagavatam Class by HG Vijaya Prabhu on 02 Nov 2013 at ISKCON Los Angeles
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Lecture on Srila Prabhupada's Disappearance Day by HH Bhakti Charu Swami on 17 Nov 2012 at ISKCON Orlando
(Bhakti Charu Swami is from a Bengali family and spent most of his early childhood in urban Kolkata. He met with Srila Prabhupada at the end of 1976 after a long and intense search for a spiritual teacher. This initial meeting resulted in Bhakti Charu Swami being assigned to translate the books of the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust into the Bengali language.)
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Lecture on Disappearance Day of Srila Prabhupada by HH Bhakti Vikasa Swami on 17 Nov 2012 at ISKCON Juhu
(His Holiness Bhakti Vikasa Swami appeared in this world in 1957 in England. He joined the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) in London in 1975 and was initiated in that year with the name Ilapati dasa by ISKCON's founder-acarya, His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.)
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Sunday Feast Lecture on Bhisma Stuti by HG Chaitanya Charan Prabhu on 03 Nov 2013 at ISKCON Mira Road
(His Grace Caitanya Charan Prabhu is a monk and spiritual teacher in the time honored tradition of bhakti yoga. He is a editor of Back to Godhead, which is the official international magazine of the Hare Krishna movement.)
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Srila Prabhupada comes to America by HG Nirantara Prabhu
(Nicholas D'Angelo was born on May 20, 1950 and was raised a strict Roman Catholic. He went to Catholic school for 13 years, but did not even finish one semester of college at St. Johns University in New York City. Instead, the dormant lusty desires in his heart manifested and he became a "hippy" in 1968. Pursuing the path of "sex, drugs and rock n roll", he tried to become famous and successful as a singer. But by 1972 the reactions of four years of intense sinful life began to weigh him down mightily. Fortunately, he came in contact with first the books, then the devotees and then Srila Prabhupada himself. In July of 1973 Nicholas surrendered to Krishna via ISKCON. Srila Prabhupada gave him his spiritual name, Nirantara dasa, in April of 1974.)
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Srimad Bhagavatam Class by HG Hari Sauri Prabhu
(Hari Sauri was born in England on November 17th 1950. In May 1971, he emigrated to Australia where, on the second day of his arrival, he met the members of the newly emerging Krishna Consciousness movement. He was duly accepted as an initiated disciple by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada on April 9th, 1972 in Sydney)
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Srila Prabhupada brings mercy of Lord Jagannath to the Whole World by HH Romapada Swami
(Romapada Swami‘s first encounter with Krishna consciousness came in Buffalo, in the shape of a lecture at the State University of New York in 1969. The lecturer was His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. The following year, Romapada Swami joined the movement in Boston and was initiated in 1971. Despite being admitted as a pre-med student, he decided to follow his spiritual path 100% and never looked back. He took sannyasa in 1983 and became an initiating spiritual master in 1985. In 1992 he began serving as a member of the GBC)
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