Hare Hare Veggie Veggie

Growing up in an German/Irish family, my idea of comfort food centered around any dish containing meat and potatoes. Beef, chicken, pork, sausage. Baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, scalloped potatoes, fried potatoes. You name it. The combinations are endless.

But no matter how terrific the food back home can make me feel, I've never been content with being comfortable in my eating. And just as I have become accustomed to eating certain foods because of the house I was raised in, I know other people have grown up in other houses and have become accustomed to something totally different.

This fall, I studied a religious group known as the Hare Krishnas. You might think of these people as the guys in saffron robes and shaved heads on the street corners in the 70s, playing music and asking for money. But the Krishna people are a specialized sect of the Hindu faith whose eating habits play a huge role in their belief system.

Hare Krishnas are vegetarians. They don't eat meat because according to their holy book, the Bhagavad-gita, their god Krishna never asked for a meat sacrifice. They also believe the cow plays an important role in the community as a symbol of life, and they work to protect it.

Once a week, two devotees from a Hare Krishna community in West Virginia come to the Wire in Athens to teach vegan cooking classes. During these classes, the instructors Boaz and Gaura teach community members how to not only become comfortable moving around the kitchen but what food products you can use to replace dairy and meat in some of your favorite dishes.

In my first experience with the Krishnas, we ate an amazing Mexican meal with spicy rice and beans and other vegetables. The next time I met with them, we tried a different fare and made a great Italian meal complete with lasagna, salad and tiramisu. We replaced meat and cheese typically found in lasagna with tofu and the cream normally part of the tiramisu recipe with coconut milk.

Though the vegetarian or vegan lifestyle is not for everyone, these different techniques in cooking might come in handy, whether you're a person looking to change your diet or are just getting bored with the same old foods.

Join in on the (free) vegan cooking classes from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. every Tuesday at the Wire, 21 Kern Street.

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For more information on Hare Krishnas visit the International Society for Krishna Consciousness Web site or see the case study I helped produce called "The Rise, Fall and Rebuilding of New Vridaban" for the Harvard Pluralism Project.

To learn more about vegan or vegetarian lifestyles, check out the links below:
*Vegetarian Times
*GoVeg.com
*Vegan Cooking Class blog