Curing the Vegetarian Blues

Even the classiest restaurants aren’t prepared for the vegetarian. A vegetarian friend who was obliged to go to a famous Italian restaurant for a business lunch told me of her plight.
Even the classiest restaurants aren’t prepared for the vegetarian. A vegetarian friend who was obliged to go to a famous Italian restaurant for a business lunch told me of her plight.
For the unexpected guest here are some nibblers you can prepare and keep on hand to serve between meals. They have a diverse range of textures and flavors. You can store them and eat them at room temperature, or warm them in the oven.
Cooking for Krsna, offering the prepared foods to Him with devotion, and tasting this offered food—the prasadam—stimulates our dormant love for Krsna.
Chickpeas are a good source of protein and iron, as well as fiber, vitamins A and b6, riboflavin, thiamin, niacin, calcium, phosphorous, sodium, and potassium. But the best thing about the chickpea is that we can offer it to Krsna.
The first thing you’ll notice is its wonderfully tender, thin pastry crust, golden-brown from deep-frying. Inside are peas, potatoes, or small chunks of cauliflower, seasoned not too little so that the samosa’s bland, and not too much so that it’s hot, but just enough to delight the palate.
You can make substantial beverages by combining fruits, spices, nuts, and essences with milk, buttermilk, or yogurt. Milk, also the basis for cold shakes, makes a soothing nightcap when served hot.
Krsna would steal yogurt and butter from the gopis. Then He would run off to enjoy His booty and share it with the monkeys from the nearby forest. When the gopis caught Krsna, He’d feign innocence and say, “Why do you call Me a thief? Do you think butter is scarce in My house?”
Preparing and eating these foods for our own pleasure is not the same as preparing and offering them to Lord Krsna for His pleasure, because food that’s material when unconnected with the Lord becomes transcendental when offered to Him.
ISKCON Cinema has just released a documentary on the life of Srila Prabhupada. Titled Your Ever Well-Wisher, the film traces Srila Prabhupada’s life from his birth in Calcutta in 1896 to his passing away in Vrndavana in 1977.
Meat-eating is bad for many reasons. For health reasons: “The inherent cholesterol, toxins, uric acid, high bacteria count, general indigestibility, and lack of fiber in the flesh of an animal whose life was aborted in turn shortens the life of the carnivore”
If you’ve ever been to a Sunday Love Feast at a Hare Krsna temple, it’s more than likely that you’ve tasted sweet rice—that cool, thick, milky dessert with rice in it—often the highlight of the feast.
For 79 cents get a one-pound package of Bird’s-Eye Tiny Taters. Or, for 19 cents, you could get a pound of fresh potatoes instead and make tikkis (pronounced “teekees”), pan-fried potato patties.
How can a twentieth-century woman simply stand there cutting a cauliflower, with the Middle East in crisis, millions going hungry, and the national economy tottering?
Fasting for some political purpose my help us reach some political goal. But the Vedic teachings direct us beyond such goals. Fasting, say the Vedic scriptures, is meant to help us control the mind and senses so we can advance in spiritual realization; it’s not for any other purpose.
By whom are you being taught what is healthy and what is not healthy? What is you authority? Actually this ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ is a material consideration. We are simply interested in what Krishna wants. So we offer Him whatever He wants to eat.
The typical Vedic lunch consists of capatis (unleavened whole-wheat breads) rice, dal (bean soup), cooked vegetables, and salad. “The best health insurance of all seems to be a well-chosen vegetarian diet from varied sources and a life free of junk foods,”
“I learned to cook by watching others—my mother, my aunt, and even the ‘walas’ [restaurant and street-stand cooks] in Calcutta,” Srila Prabhupada said. Later on, in his householder days, he occasionally joined his wife in the kitchen.
The Sanskrit word karma means “action” or, more specifically, any material action that gives us a material reaction and thus binds us to the material world. So a karma-free diet is one that produces no material reaction; it’s a sinless diet.
Beef-, fish-, and chicken-lovers take note: There’s a cheaper, tastier, healthier, saintlier way to meet your protein needs — dhal. Besides being a good source of iron and B vitamins, is an excellent source of vegetable protein.
The most popular of all unleavened breads, chapatis are traditionally made with stone-ground whole-wheat flour. Thus they’re rich in fiber, vitamins B and E, protein, iron, unsaturated fats, and carbohydrates.