Almost Instant! On a tight schedule? These delicious dishes for Krsna are quick and easy!
Visakha Devi Dasi: Krsna Prasadam. I was looking through a new cookbook on making meals in twenty minutes, and I read, “Never before have so many people wanted so much out of life and had so little time to enjoy it. Between inflation, two-job marriages, and the quest for self-improvement, the momentum of our life style has us all dancing at a furious reel of achieving and coping. Something has to give. And usually the first thing to go is the time spent preparing our daily meals….”
When it comes to food, we want it effortlessly and fast. That’s why forty percent of the American food dollar is spent in restaurants and why an uncalculated amount is spent on fast foods at home precooked, frozen, canned, and instant.
But why, in the “momentum of our life style,” is cooking the first thing to go? Why not TV? Or the movies? Or the baseball game? Well, maybe it’s because cooking takes a lot of effort and the reward is often small and fleeting. We may labor for a few hours to make an elegant luncheon, only to be left with a pile of dirty dishes an hour after it’s served; and then a few hours later, everyone’s ready for another meal. Was it worth the effort? From the statistics, most of us must think not. We’d rather phone for a take-out pizza and sit back for Star Trek reruns. There are just more important things to do than cook.
Krsna’s devotees, however, have a different attitude. Our desire to get an understanding of who we are, who God is, and what our relationship with Him is. In the Bhagavad-gita, Lord Krsna explains that the process for achieving this goal is devotional service.
Time spent in devotional service is important. Time spent in other ways is wasted and can never be regained even at the cost of millions of dollars. The Srimad-Bhagavatam (2.3.17) confirms, “Both by rising and setting, the sun decreases the duration of life of everyone, except one who utilizes the time in devotional service to the all-good Personality of Godhead.” Similarly, Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu said, “With every rising and setting of the sun, a day passes and is lost. Why then do you remain idle and not serve the Lord of the heart?” And a great devotee of the Lord prayed, “O my Lord, I have spent my life uselessly. Having obtained a human birth and having not served Radha and Krsna, I have knowingly drunk poison.”
A devotee understands that if we’re slapping a meal together so we can get out of the kitchen and watch TV, we’re wasting our time both in the kitchen and out of it. Cooking, or anything else done for our sense pleasure, is useless as far as spiritual realization goes; ultimately it won’t help us enjoy life or get much out of it. But if we’re cooking for Krsna (or doing any other activity for His satisfaction), our time is perfectly spent.
The care we take in finding the proper ingredients for cooking, as well as the love and devotion we give to preparing and offering dishes to the Lord, are all part of our quest for self-realization; they’re all devotional service. Those who purchase the food for Krsna, those who cook it, those who offer it, those who serve it, those who taste it, and those who clean up afterward all get a reward that’s neither small nor fleeting. They get eternal, spiritual benefit. In one way or another, they are engaging in devotional service, and that will lead them to the highest enjoyment in life.
The care we take in finding the proper ingredients for cooking, as well as the love and devotion we give to preparing and offering dishes to the Lord, are all part of our quest for self-realization; they’re all devotional service. Those who purchase the food for Krsna, those who cook it, those who offer it, those who serve it, those who taste it, and those who clean up afterward all get a reward that’s neither small nor fleeting. They get eternal, spiritual benefit. In one way or another, they are engaging in devotional service, and that will lead them to the highest enjoyment in life. It’s all a matter of knowing the process.
Sometimes it seems that the dishes Lord Krsna favors most take the longest time to make like milk sweets that must be boiled down for forty-five minutes, or kachauris (stuffed savories) that are deep-fried for twenty-five minutes. Yet, even in the momentum of our devotional lifestyle, we’re often fully engaged doing other services and don’t have as much time as we’d like to cook for Krsna. So this month, we’re featuring dishes that are quick and easy and that are also pleasing to the Lord. Puffed rice, for example, is a light meal, great for breakfast, brunch, or an afternoon or evening snack. Not exactly “instant,” but almost. And every second that we give to making, offering, serving, and tasting these foods brings us closer to our goal: an eternal life full of bliss and knowledge with Krsna.
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