The contest works like this:

                                   (Detailed Printable version)
 

1.   Some devotees volunteer as judges.

Anyone can qualify as a judge, as long as you are at least 10 years old and give a $25 donation.

There is a limit of only 24 judges, and the income helps offset the cost of the festival.

To volunteer as a judge in advance, you can  email us.

2.   The contestants: prepare their favorite preparation that they would like to enter in the contest and then bring it to the temple.

Anyone can enter the cooking contest providing they are vegetarian and follow these special rules of cooking.  (The rules will also be posted on paper and posters throughout the temple)

 

3.   Register your preparation.
Before each preparation is offered and placed before the deities, it has to be registered first.

When you bring your preparation to the temple you must first bring it to the registration table in the temple lobby between 5:30 - 6:45 PM on Monday February 18th and register it under your name and its specific category.

 

You bring your preparation to the devotee in the temple lobby and tell him what your name is and under which category you are entering it. He then places your name in the register for that category and places a tag on the container with a secret name and number for your preparation to be judged.

4.   Serving the preparations:

When the serving begins, the servers tell each of the judges, "This is Krishna number 14," or "this is Nityananda number 8," and so on.

The judges only know the number and secret name but nothing other than that.

They then taste a small amount, and mark the score card corresponding to the secret name and number.

The judges find the space on the Judges Score Sheet that corresponds to the secret name

and number that the server tells them the preparation is, and then they "grade it" by
giving it a score from 5 to 10.

 

No scores under 5 are accepted to avoid the pitfall of finding fault with prasadam.

5 means "good" and 10 means you will go back to Godhead by eating this preparation,

and everything in between.

After the preparations are offered to the judges, it "overflows" to the general body of

devotees.

Because there are so many preparations, everyone gets wonderful prasadam, but nobody except the judges gets all the prasadam. There is also a "Large Prep" category that is cooked to see that everyone gets a full feast.

5.   Tallying the scores:

After all the preps are served and the scores sheets are marked someone picks up the completed score sheets and gives them to to an anonymous person to tally the scores and determine who the winner in each category is as well as an overall winner.

6.   The winners:

There are various

awards for the winners of each of the categories as well as a first place overall winner who gets their name permanently engraved on the honorable Lord Nityananda's Transcendental Nectar Cup Trophy

The Lord Nityananda Cooking Contest is a wonderful festival where devotees come from around the world glorify and cook for Lord Nityananda in Vancouver, Canada.

 

In the words of  Ram Agrawal, who was a former judge  "It is better than the Winter
Olympics, and the scoring is more honest, too."

Schedule of Events

Evening

 

5:30 PM - 7:00 PM

Preparation Registration

 

   5:30 PM  Class

   6:30   Arati & Kirtan

7:00   Judging of preps  &               Prasadam Feast for everyone