Festivals

In addition to serving prasadam each Sunday at ISKCON temples, devotees also began to bring their spiritual vegetarian food out to the public in a variety of ways. Ever since the days of Woodstock, devotees have set up prasadam kitchens at outdoor gatherings to provide sumptuous free vegetarian food. Recently devotees have served thousands of plates of prasadam at events such as the California US Festival, the Glastonbury Festival near Stonehenge, England, the New Zealand Sweetwaters festival, large-scale national peace rallies in Western Germany, and cultural festivals throughout Central and South America. ISKCON members regularly set up prasadam booths at fairs and health- or food-related conventions. The Hare Krsna movement also stages its own massive festivals, such as Ratha-yatra (the Festival of the Chariots), held annually in Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., Montreal, Toronto, New Orleans, Sydney, Melbourne, London, Bombay, and other major cities throughout the world. At each event, devotees distribute tens of thousands of plates of delicious vegetarian food. Scott Smith, associate editor of the Vegetarian Times, recently remarked, "The Hare Krsna cooks are the only mass preparers of foodstuffs who maintain such an extraordinarily and consistently high quality of culinary excellence, even when catering to as many as twelve thousand people at a go." When members of ISKCON's Los Angeles center catered a vegetarian luncheon at a celebrity tennis tournament for the National Kidney Foundation, the tournament chairman wrote that the food's "tastiness and healthfulness was all excellent."