Food for Thought: Best Shavuot Recipes

At sundown May 26 Jews will observe Shavuot, the day generations ago that Moses received the Torah on Mr. Sinai.

And just like a number of other Jewish holidays and festivals, special types of foods mark the occasion. But what to serve?

Let me tell you a bit about this holiday. Shavuot is a Hebrew word meaning "weeks," according to the Union for Reform Judaism. Why weeks? Well because the Torah tells us it took 49 days - seven weeks - for our ancestors to travel from Egypt, which is observed as part of Passover, to Sinai. Shavuot symbolizes the completion of that journey, and the 50th day of that journey is when we received the Torah.

Like so many other Jewish holidays, Shavuot, one of Judaism's three pilgrimage festivals (the others being Passover and Sukkot) , began as an ancient agricultural festival, marking the end of the spring barley harvest and the beginning of the summer wheat harvest.

But Jews don't observe the holiday by eating foods featuring wheat, but rather dairy foods, denoting the sweetness of the Torah, and the land of milk and honey.

So many different recipes abound for the foods served on this day - from blintzes, to manicotti, to sweet kugel and more. Here are but a couple:

Easy Shavuot Blintzes

A sweet and delicious Shavuot treat. A very simple way to make homemade blintzes is to start the process with pre-made, store-bought crepes. All you need to do is create a family-pleasing filling!

Filling Ideas:

• Canned fruit pie filling or
• 2 cups ricotta cheese or dry cottage cheese

blended with 1 egg, 2 Tbsp. sugar, 1 Tbsp. margarine, 1 tsp. lemon juice, 1/2 tsp. vanilla.

Place a heaping spoonful of filling on the crepe. Fold over the opposite sides of the crepe and roll up, jellyroll fashion. Then bake or fry blintzes. To bake, place blintzes in a greased baking dish and bake in a 400°F pre-heated oven. Bake 12-15 minutes. To fry, melt butter or margarine in a medium-sized skillet, on a burner that is set at medium –medium/high. Fry blintzes a few at a time, browning on both sides.

Serve blintzes with jam, sour cream or yogurt.

Roasted Vegetables with Feta Cheese

Yield: 4 servings

• 2 cups zucchini, washed and sliced
• 1 green, 1 red, 1 yellow bell pepper, seeded and cut into thin strips
• 1 small tomato, cut into wedges
• 1 small onion, peeled, sliced and separated into rings
• 1/2 cup fresh mushrooms, sliced
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon oregano, crumbled
• salt and pepper to taste
• 4 ounces low-fat feta cheese

Preheat oven to 350°F. Arrange vegetables in a small baking dish. Combine oil, oregano, salt and pepper, and brush vegetables with this mixture. Cover the dish with aluminum foil and bake for 30 minutes or until the vegetables are soft. Remove foil, sprinkle crumbled feta cheese on top and brown under broiler for 4 more minutes.

For more options, log on to Epicurious Magazine, About.com and Hazon.

What are your favorite Shavuot recipes? Please share!