Happiness

Bhagavad Gita gives a very nice teaching: If something is very pleasurable in the beginning, we can experience dissatisfaction afterwards. For example, those extra pieces of burfi. The tongue is happy, but we may not feel so good later. In fact, a good lesson here is that: 

SENSE GRATIFICATION KILLS MOTIVATION. 

Try cleaning up the kitchen after stuffing yourself with more prasada than you actually need. Not very pleasant, right? And then there may be the desire to just leave things a mess until after a nap or something. 

Compare that to the happiness of saving time by instead not over eating and promptly finishing cleaning up afterwards. The Bhagavad-Gita again confirms that what may not be so pleasant in the beginning, such as having to clean up instead of enjoying more of something delicious, results in feeling good about our selves afterwards

Sometimes, we hear an acharya preaching to the mind. Turns out the tongue needs a lot of preaching to as well! I mean, why do we put ourselves into a difficult situation just for that little sense organ called the “tongue”? Again, Bhagavad-Gita explains that it’s due to lust.  Our original love  for Krishna has been reduced to lust.

 So even better than preaching to the tongue or remembering that happiness comes from doing service rather than sense gratification, is to do everything for the pleasure of the Lord. Whatever we do all throughout the day we can ask ourselves, “Is this pleasing to Krishna?’ and try to surrender and do everything with love, devotion, appreciation, and so on, invoking the Lord’s  causeless mercy upon us.

Vegetarian "frittata"

 I didn't know what the word frittata meant until a few days ago, but that's the word I'm going to use for what was put in an offering then. Instead of eggs we got arrowroot. It came out pretty good, so I thought it'd be worth sharing 

INGREDIENTS:

A handful of finely chopped or grated veggies (In this case, some wild chickweed) 

A handful of grated paneer

Spices (Here was a little ginger root,  roasted cumin powder, coriander powder, freshly ground black pepper, some hing cooked in a small amount of ghee first, and a dash of turmeric)

Salt, as desired

2 T arrowroot

water

ghee for frying

PREPARATION:

Combine all the ingredients and add the water a little at a time, until there's enough to mix everything together, but it holds together as a pattie.

Here a small cast iron skillet was heated very hot and then the ghee was added, enough to coat the bottom of the pan, and then the ingredients shaped into a pattie to fry.

Lower the heat. In this case. I added a cover also and cooked for at least 3 minutes. 

Check the bottom of the pattie to see if it's getting crispy. Or at least browned. Then flip it over. It's nice if you drizzle on a little more ghee first so that the other side will get crispy as well. 

Cook covered another 3 minutes on low heat. 

This is the first time I made this, so I'm pretty sure low heat will be best, but medium heat might make it even more crispy. I'll have to try that next time.

Offer to Krishna with a chutney or a bun (pictured is simply made from naturally yeasty chapati dough that was left to rise) with favorite toppings. Hare Krishna Jay Prabhupada