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Gopala Guru dasaA bit about a Hare Krishna in Palmerston North...
August 29 How to cook for 125 people in your kitchen at home - the easy way!Yes we are back! I was locked out of my account because I forgot my password, but after a bit of digging around I managed to reset my password - so we have some catching up to do. We did a program at Massey University for the international food day, we cooked up for 125 people and gave it all out for free, Krishna Murari organised some sponsorship for the food. How did we cook it up? Well, here is a step by step guide on how to cook for 125 people in your own little kitchen at home - let me know how you get on.
Put 2 - 2.5 Kg's of dry chickpeas in the other two pots (4-5 Kg in total), fill the pots until they are 3/4 fill with cold water. This preparation should be done the day before to avoid running around too much on the day of cooking.
This is how your stove should look before you go to bed, make sure the landlord isn't around when you do this kind of cook-up. At one stage we had all 4 burners maxed out and the oven going full blast while we were roasting some seeds for a salad dressing, it reached light speed and overtook the starship enterprise. Unfortunately it started to smoke up a bit so we had to give her a breather for a while. It made it through the ordeal and will live to see another cook-up.
Arrange all of your dry ingredients so that it is ready to go, this will save you time when you cook it up on the following day.
NEXT MORNING: Turn on the chickpeas first thing, they cook by themselves and don't need too much attention. You will notice some froth rise to the top - scoop this gunk off as it rises and cook the chickpeas until they are soft.
When the chickpeas are halfway through cooking you can turn on the potatoes and start cooking them. When the chickpeas have finished cooking transfer them into a large 20 Litre bucket (or whatever large container you can get from the local plastic store). Put all the chickpea broth/water in one of the pots and clean the other pot - it's now time to make the sauce.
Heat some oil and add your spices (send me an email if you want the recipe), then add the tomato paste and fry for a while. I like to slightly scorch the tomato paste on the bottom of the pot and then quickly stir it in, this gives the curry a richer and fuller taste - there is a big difference between scorched and burnt so if you don't know the difference I don't recommend doing this. Add the chickpea broth (this gives the sauce more taste than just water) and bring to the boil. While this is happening; clean the other pot, fill it with water and bring it to the boil.
Add 4 large bunches of spinach to the sauce, chopped finely and washed three times, and boil until cooked. Add salt, sugar and some coconut cream if desired. The potatoes should be cooked by now.
THE JUGGLE: Drain the two pots of cooked potatoes Make sure the potatoes are still slightly firm since they will still cook a bit more once you take them off the heat. Pour the sauce evenly into the two potato pots, give them a stir, and then distribute the curry evenly amongst the three pots - so you should have the two potato pots and the sauce pot with a mixture of sauce and potatoes. Next, add the chickpeas, some fresh coriander and stir. You can add some hot water or reserved potato water to make the curry wetter.
Put two pots on the stove and bring the curry to the boil, then transfer it back into the big bucket - you can reheat the other pot before you need it. You now have about 30 litres of curry - good to go!
Wash the two empty pots, dry them, then put them on the stove with some oil in them. Add some turmeric, poppy seeds, 3 litres of basmati rice and salt to each pot - stir-fry until hot. The water in the other pot should be boiling by now, so add 5.5 litres of boiling water to each pot. Stir occasionally until it boils and then put a lid on. After 1 minute turn the element on the lowest temperature and leave it for 20 minutes. NOTE: If you want fluffy rice with grains that don't stick together, it is important that the rice grains are hot and the water is boiling when they are mixed together. Don't stir it for too long otherwise you will break up the grains and make it go mushy. Leave the lid on and don't touch the rice while it is cooking. There you have it, rice and curry for 125 people! We also made a salad and dressing, Krishna Murari made that while I was cooking the rice and curry. The whole thing took us just over two hours to cook, the preparation on the previous day took me just under an hour. August 02 Three programsThings have been pretty hectic here in Palmy, we are now doing three programs a week for the uni students so there is not much spare time. Krishna Murari has started taking the yoga session - she had 17 attendees this week and 20 last week. We had 10 people turn up for the cooking class at our new location in the international students kitchen on campus - a great kitchen with fantastic facilities. Our latest program is mantra meditation at our place in the city. We have this on Friday nights and start off with a small bit of meditation using counting beads (we call it japa mala) with the majority of the evening consisting of a mantra jam (also known as kirtan).
We had 8 people book in although only 3 turned up, it was a good thing because I used the session as a pilot program and got some feedback from those who turned up for how to run the upcoming sessions. One of the crew, Dan, is a musician and wanted to learn some of the tunes - so I showed him some tunes on the guitar and he will practice them for next week. I will get a bit more practice in on the djembe, so next week should sound pretty good.
We went shopping today and got some cushions for the mantra meditation and a couple of 12 Litre pots for some big cook ups, so we are ready to pick up the pace a bit! July 26 Vegetarian VideoHere is an interesting video on you tube about vegetarianism, I like it when it mentions Carl Lewis:
June 29 Asian Cooking Retreat
A few weeks ago we had held an Asian cooking retreat at Gaura Haven, a picturesque centre located 10 minutes inland just before entering Otaki. We vegetarianised some popular Asian dishes, below are some of the dishes we taught:
2) Wantons stuffed with almond, pea and lime 3) Stirfry noodles with mixed vegetables 4) Hot malaysian salad with tofu, mango and chayote 5) Satay sauce
1) Bean curd, corn and carrot soup (imitation shark fin) 2) Tofu, cucumber and carrot sushi 3) Vegetable manchurian 4)Shiskebabs 5)Satay sauce (a different recipe) We were going to do satay style shishkebaks, like they have in Bali, but we didn't have the soy bean chunks. So I made some gluten and used that instead, here is a recipe we used - although we used hing instead of onions in the broth.
One of the crew celebrated their birthday during the retreat, so we whipped up a cake to celebrate the occasion:
This is my favourite yoga asana (posture): LSD (or left side down). I taught everyone how to do it after we woofed into an amazing vegetarian laksha.
A good time was had by all, we are now gearing up for our next retreat which will be 'Gujurati Indian Cooking'. June 14 DinnerWe had an interesting dinner the other night. I noticed a burning smell coming from the kitchen, ended up being a wooden spoon that Krishna Murari had left in the oven. Novel idea, maybe she was try to infuse a smokey flavour in the polenta? Either that or she left it in the tray after she stirred the veggies :)
We had some cracker cooking classes (including a retreat) over the past few weeks, pictures to follow shortly... May 20 Vegetarian Sausage Rolls!Here is the awesome recipe for vegetarian sausage rolls - they go great with tomato sauce! We had them at a program a few weeks ago: Ingredients
Making the filling
Assembly
NB: The egg replacer isn’t essential. I think it makes them a bit lighter though. May 09 My new mateWe went to a work function in Whanganui (1 hour drive from Palmy) a few weeks ago. It was the opening of the new UCOL campus. The prime minister was there, Rt Hon Helen Clarke, and my prime mission for the day was to get my picture taken with her. So I hit up the president of the student association, my boss, and asked her to sort it out for me. She also wanted a picture with the prime minister so she spoke with one of the local members of parliament and lined it up for us. The result:
Next time I want to have a Bhagavad-gita on hand to present to her, that would be cool. According to the ancient teachings of India (the Vedas), those in positions of leadership take on a percentage of the karma of their dependents (either good or bad) because they should be looking after the material and spiritual well being of their dependents. Unfortunately I could see that statement as holding true when I saw the prime minister, she was definitely building up some pretty heavy karma - there is a huge meat industry in New Zealand that the government supports among many other things. April 27 My second pay checkSo, I had a lot of fun lashing out my first paycheck on a broken window (not). About 4 days later I had another opportunity to fritter away my earnings. We got in contact with a devotee family who live in Palmerston North, it was good to know that we are not the only Hari's in Palmy. They invited us over to their house for a program on a festival we hold called Rama Navami. After a huge feast and lots of chanting we made our way home, with a huge plate of Indian sweets. The sweets were sitting on my lap when I was driving, and yes - I was eating them with great relish and delight. I then went to turn into a wide street but didn't notice the curb that came out into the road to make the street entrance narrow. The result:
The sweets were ok, nothing happened to them. They met their fate later on the next day when I came to pick up the car with the tow truck. I ended up running over the curb and blasting both tyres on the left hand side. I didn't realise that I had blown both tyres, so I got the jack out of the boot and started to jack up the car - at this point my wife thought it was a good opportunity to tell me what was on her mind while I was trying to jack up the car in the pouring rain - oh the fun! When I had nearly finished jacking up the car my wife very kindly pointed out to me that we had blasted both tyres - oh the joy! Since it was 10pm in the evening and pouring with rain I just left the car and walked home with my wife - she found it was the perfect opportunity to have a deep and meaningful conversation with me - oh the bliss! Since I had damaged both tyres and hit a curb I thought it would be wise to take the Hari mobile in for a realignment - so I got a tow truck to take it to the tyre shop. I made the most of the money I paid for the tow and went for a ride when the car was getting hauled on the truck: I am still deciding whether or not the sweets were worth it...
Not only were the two tyre written off, but one of the other tyres was starting to show some canvas, so I ended up replacing all 4 tyres and getting a full realignment. So it wasn't until my third week of work that I actually had some of my pay check to spend. My wife and I were discussing the two incidents around the trashing of the Hari mobile. The obvious cause of both incidents was a lack of attention, but what caused the inattention? (apart from the sweets that is). We looked into it a bit deeper and saw that Krishna was pushing us to pick up the pace with our programs in Palmy; if we did that then we would naturally be more focused. So since then we have now established a weekly cooking course and Krishnafest program at our house, with more programs in the pipeline - more details to follow... April 20 Wedding BellsLast Friday we celebrated of Wedding of Divya Jnana and Sandrananda. Divya Jnana and I spent a few years in the ashram together in Melbourne. He also came to my Wedding in Melbourne, so it was nice to see him off into the next phase of his life. We had a semi stag doo for him, although there were no drinking or blind folds involved in the event. The boys cooked up a huge feast for everyone, did some chanting and garlanded Divya Jnana with a special garland made of a chain and padlock (to remind him of what he was getting into):
It was a fantastic day! The weather was excellent and the retreat centre where they held the wedding was nicely decorated. Both bride and groom looked the part and everyone had a great time: Municari Prabhu, based in Hamiltron (city of the future) did the yajna (fire sacrifice) and coordinated the ceremony, this time he managed to stay awake for the whole ceremony (in house joke): A beautiful cake was made: An interesting thing happened, but we actually celebrated two weddings at once! Mahavan Prabhu and his wife Khadirivan Mataji married 7 years ago, but never had a proper Indian ceremony, so they also jumped on board: I made a speech at the wedding and did my best to embarrass as many people as possible, every wedding needs a yahoo. Municari did a good job with the ceremony and had plenty of jokes to tell. With friends like these, who needs enemies: April 16 Car vs TreeMen normally spend lots of money on two things:
1) Cars
and
2) Women
What happens if you put the two of them together? You spend even more money! So my first realisation I got from working for a week was to realise what I was working for - to spend money on my wife and car.
My wife helped me with this realisation. She dropped me off at work one day and went into town for an appointment. She had to reverse out of the car park and saw there was a tree behind her, which she thought was pretty harmless, although she forgot that where there are leaves there are normally branches too. The result:
I do Kung-fu once or twice a week for some exercise, looks like I should have put more stickers on the window to keep it together:
So my wife learnt a lot about getting car windows repaired that day and she also cooked a pretty good meal for when I came home from work too (good move). But I must admit that she did a good job at getting it repaired and found some second hand glass to replace it with. Still, that was a large part of my first pay check that my wife spent for me. My next mission is to get another Kung-fu sticker, not only do they hold the screen together but they also allow one to pull out in front of people on busy roads without anyone tooting their horn at you In my next entry I will let you know what I spend my second pay check on! April 14 WorkI am now officially a productive member of society - yes, I have a job. I am the manager of the students association at UCOL, which is a large educational institute with 15-20,000 students across New Zealand.
The last manager left amongst a whole lot of politics, so one of my first tasks was to have a special meeting with all the staff - I called it an airing session. They blew a lot of hot air and felt a lot better at the end of it. Some of them were still a bit fried out with all of the politics that was going on, so I told them that I had managed a non profit RELIGIOUS institution for 5 years - that put things in perspective and made what they had to go through look pretty average, it worked like a charm.
This is only a temporary position, I came off second best in the recruitment process yet the other candidate couldn't start until May - so I am filling in. I had another interview last week for another management position and that went really well, so we will see how we go with that. It has been interesting getting into the workforce again with non-Hare Krishna's, some devotees I know found it pretty hard (since there is a vast difference in consciousness between a spiritualist and a materialist) but it doesn't phase me that much. My purpose in life isn't to get out there and make heaps of money, I'm using this job to support my family so that we can carry on with our Hare Krishna activities - that is my main focus. I have also been taking advantage of my current work situation and developing contacts with the student associations around Palmy, so I am gradually building up a good network of connections which is really exciting and important for any programs we want to put on in the future.
I got my first paycheck at the beginning of last week and in my next blog I will let you know what I spent it on! March 27 Cooking classesWe had our first official cooking class last Thursday - it was a hoot! We had two veterinary students, an accounting student (who had three family members who were vets), a philosophy student and the main radio announcer and event organiser at the local student radio station. All but one of them were vegetarian and the one who wasn't is trying to change her diet to a vegetarian one.
We prepared the following Asian finger food menu:
We are still getting venue confirmation at the university, so we held the lesson at our flat. We had 5 guests attend and the kitchen was pretty packed, here Will and Eli (the man who helped set up the Life club) show off their Satay Sauce creation:
We ran out of room in the kitchen, so we had to put the food processor in the lounge to make the coconut and pineapple punch:
Everyone had a great time and the end result was fantastic, we all enjoyed the meal:
March 22 The life clubI have been a bit busy being unemployed lately
 , although it has paid off and I now have a job which is cool - but that's another blog entry. The uni club is all up and running and is called 'The life club'. We didn't start it ourselves, the main radio announcer of the student radio station in Palmy initiated everything and one of the devotees from Wellington, Dina Dayala, helped him. The club will offer yoga, meditation, vegetarian cooking classes, tie dying, retreats, seminars and heaps of other alternative things. We will look after the yoga and vegetarian cooking classes and organise the occasional seminar or two. Dina Dayala will hold a couple of yoga classes a week and organise the retreats held at the centre out at Otaki (she is doing two a month at the moment) and Krishna Murari and I will do one or two cooking classes and some philosophy classes. Most of these will be held on the campus, although we will try and do some cooking classes at peoples homes as well.It works out really well, the club organisers will promote everything for us - we just teach it! So it is a great arrangement. KM and I are also setting up a gig called 'Goloka Yoga'. Since university only goes for 26 weeks a year we want to carry on with the yoga, cooking classes and seminars when uni is out - we will target the younger working professionals and students who don't leave the city when uni has finished. We are getting a web page made up and will be promoting our activities through the web and to those we meet at uni during the year - that way we can keep on going all year round.
In a week or two we are going to start a 'Krishnafest' program at our flat once a week. We will invite people we have met and do some chanting, have a philosophy discussion and a meal afterwards - so it's all on! I will post the link when the website is up and running... March 05 A man of leisurePalmerston North is a small city, only 75,000 people. This is a stark change from living in a city of 3.8 million for over 6 years (Melbourne) and my wife living in a city of 7.5 million (London) for 21 years. So naturally there are a lot less jobs here, although I have managed to get some applications out. I have an interview next Monday for the position of association manager for the UCOL students association. It covers their three campuses in central New Zealand and involves going over their books and making sure everything is running smoothly, taxes, wages, bit of operations management etc. I am interested in the position because it will give me more practical knowledge for running a business later on, I am not so into it for the career aspect. Simultaneously I am applying for some positions with career advancement potential to keep my options open. What business would I like to start up? Don't know yet, but I am keeping an eye out.
It has been interesting being a man of leisure for the first time in my life, I have always had a job ever since I was 11 and it took a bit of getting used to having no regular work. So I have been making the most of my time, I have been studying up lots of Hare Krishna literature, learning some new instruments, practicing hatha yoga and making some preparations for some cooking classes that Krishna Murari and I will be giving. Here's a picture of me looking very excited with my new djembe:
Since we will be doing heaps of programs at the local uni we want to use instruments that they are more familiar with. The good thing about a djembe is all you need to do is close your eyes, sway your head around a bit and hit the thing - sounds cool and cuts a great profile.
 In any case, most people can pick it up and have a tinker with it if we have a jam so that's cool. I also picked up a basic guitar which I learnt a small bit of when at uni, I will get some of my friends to show me a few tunes and then I will be into it again.We had our first club meeting at the uni last night and it fully rocked! I will fill you in with my next write up...
February 27 Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati ThakurYesterday we celebrated the appearance day (birthday) of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur, he was the spiritual master of Srila Prabhupada - the devotee who started the Hare Krishna movement in the West.
Here is a link to a brief biography about him: http://www.krishna.com/node/673
The night before I decided to cook up a feast, so in the morning I came up with a list of preps to make and went shopping. I went to this cool Indian store which has heaps of goodies in it and I was elated when I saw all of the Indian vegetables in the freezer, so I slightly extended my menu and gave it a full on Indian flavour. I cooked the following preps:
1) Basmati rice
2) Toor dal
3) Paneer, tomato and pea curry
4) Spinach curry
5) Tomato with deep fried okra and potato
7) Potato, roasted peanut and pea stuffed samosas
8) Puris
9) Karela chips
10) Tamarind and date chutney
11) Cucumber, grape and pomegranate raita
12) Vanilla sweet rice
13) Jagannatha gaja
14) Pineapple and coconut punch
15) A glass of water on the side
I had a lot of fun in the kitchen and as per normal I cooked too much. We are in the process of setting up a yoga club at the local university and one of our friend is up here sorting it out. She has a contact who runs the student radio station, who is helping her get the club up and running, and she invited him over for lunch.
He got a surprise.
He ate so much that he could hardly move, therefore I considered my cooking a success
. All in all it was a great way to celebrate the day, we were talking for a while and he put me onto some other key contacts in the city for student related activities, so hopefully we will do some catering at the uni rock concert this weekend.I was going to take some pictures of the meal but we dealt to it pretty quickly so there wasn't anything left to take pictures of
 .February 25 War crySometimes I do some special meditation before cooking a big feast...
Thanks for the pic Nitai Nama! February 13 Their heeeeere...Yes, the Hari's have officially landed in Palmy. We have secured our post just off the city centre and are ready to go. We have a great place, just a 10 minute walk to the city centre. We have a two room unit in a complex with 7 other units in pleasant surroundings, all very quiet neighbours. My wife and I are now officially on an organic diet, we are doing this by keeping our regular meals simple and healthy, and if we decide to go for pizza or anything flash and fancy we will use non-organics otherwise it will be too expensive.
I had an interview last week for the position of a community funding advisor with the department of internal affairs. For the interview I had to do a 10 minute presentation on: "What do I see as the gaps in achieving sustainable communities within the wider Ruapehu and Wairapa regions". Interesting topic, that took a bit of getting into, but a visit to the New Zealand statistics website put me on the right track. The interview went really well, although one of the interviewers picked up that I was a Hare Krishna and I could tell he wasn't into employing me. Anyway, it was great practice, and I am in the process of lining up more interviews.
One of our key tasks here is to start up some uni programs, we were off to a good start but have had a few technical difficulties... January 29 Operation PalmyAll systems are go for 'Operation Palmy'. Krishna Murari and I did a short mission up to Palmerston North (Palmy) last week and found a flat to rent, a nice two room unit in a seven unit complex. It's in a quiet street and is only a 10 minute walk to the city centre. A couple of units are taken up by students, which is a bonus since we will need some contacts to do some programs at the university.
Next Monday we will go up to my home town, New Plymouth, and go through our stuff and decide what to shift down. We stored all of our furniture at my mums house, but we don't want to take it all over yet. This flat is just a temporary thing for a month or two so that we can get a good feel of the city, after that we will look at purchasing a property with heaps of room for having lots of programs and Hari parties! January 21 The Hari MobileI got my drivers license when I was 15 and ever since then, over the past 13 years, I have managed to get by without owning a car. My parents gave a car to my sister and I to use, at university I borrowed my flat mates cars and in the temple I used the temple vehicles. So that inevitable day came when I had to purchase a set of wheels.
I was fortunate enough to have the valuable guidance of a friend in Tauranga who used to have a car yard. He worded me up on what to look for, how to see that a used car is road worthy etc. I homed in on a Honda Accord station wagon and decided to take it for a test drive.
There is a devotee in Wellington who used to be a bit of a boy racer (the New Zealand term for someone who hoons around in cars, drag races etc), so I asked him to come out with me. He was first class; he knew everything to check and gave it a good inspection. The car was regularly serviced, with all the original service records, and just recently got its road worthy certificate. Then it was time for the test drive.
So my friend took the car for a drive, I was in the passenger seat. I had often seen the rally racing on the tv, but never been in one until now. My friend was super enthusiastic to test the car out to the max to make sure it was a good buy - my concern that if the car was in good condition, it wasnt going to be after he drove it!
Thankfully I survived the drive, so did the car, and he gave it the all clear. We got the car for a great price and I now have my first Hari mobile, all ready for rendering service to Krishna and his devotees!
I took it out to its first catering gig in the weekend, loaded with 150kg of rice, a veggie chopping machine and a few Haris, and inundated it with dust (there was a lot of dust at the festival) - so its fully sanctified!
I did make one mistake though. The previous owners were smokers so the car did smell a bit. So I got the brilliant idea of bombing the car with incense. It didn't quite work. The car then took on a smell of sandlewood smoke and cigarette smoke
 . So after a few phone calls I managed to find a mobile car cleaner who spent 4 hours shampooing all the interior of the car, so now it is as clean as a wistle.
When I am in India next time I might try and bring back a mystic yogi to throw under the bonet and keep the engine going, that will hopefully keep costs down with the increase in petrol prices
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