Ran across this fine devotee cookbook on the Sampradaya Sun this morning, and thought we should share it with our readers. The recipes did in fact remind us of the early “love feasts”, and devotee diet in the early days of the Hare Krishna Movement. Very Nice!
1970’s Devotee Cookbook
BY: SUN STAFF
Aug 02, 2012 — CANADA (SUN) —
The following cookbook manuscript, which contains a wonderful collection of vintage Hare Krsna recipes, was handed to us several years ago by a devotee, who’d been carrying an old photocopy of it around for many years. While the manuscript doesn’t bear the author’s name, we’re told that it was likely compiled in the early 1970’s by Revatinanda dasa.
A bit of the text was illegible, but the manuscript is reproduced below. Obviously the cookbook was written while Srila Prabhupada was still physically present. Judging from the language and recipes, our best guess is that it’s circa 1972-73. The recipes will be pleasurably familiar to devotees who remember the wonderful prasadam pastimes in ISKCON temples during the ‘early days’.
Devotee Cookbook
“This is a very limited presentation of recipes for prasadam offerings that I have become practiced in preparing over the last few years. The ingredients and basic techniques used in the preparations are according to parampara tradition. Whether the details are as Srila Prabhupada would have exactly instructed, I do not know, but I have experienced on many occasions that He has been pleased by some of these exact preparations. Also I have experienced that devotees especially, and usually karmies (non-devotees) as well, are very much attracted by my preparations. For these reasons – to increase the attractiveness of our offerings to Sri Sri Radha and Krishna, and to increase the satisfaction of both the devotees and karmies with the prasadam they take to purify their existence – I have prepared this small cook-book. It is simply an offering of one devotee’s experience in the matter of prasadam preparation.
The Hare Krishna Movement 