Shavuot Recipes
There are two established customs on Shavuot: The first is to stay up all night learning Torah. The second is to eat foods made with dairy. These foods include cheese crepes, blintzes, quiches, casseroles, pizza—and the ubiquitous cheesecake.
However, if you can’t eat dairy, or choose not to, then what foods do you eat that provide the “dairy feel” of this holiday custom?
Luckily, there are a ton of substitute ingredients that are not only healthy but also taste amazing together. These include store-bought artisan cheeses made from cashews and almonds, as well as an assortment of other ingredients that combine to recreate familiar flavors and textures of the foods that you probably grew up with. For savory dishes, nutritional yeast provides the familiar “cheesy” flavor.
Additionally, some of these recipes are gluten-free, like the Caprese Pizza and the no-bake Blueberry Cheesecake, while others use ancient variants of traditional ingredients, like einkorn wheat in the Cheese Crepes. All are plant-based, incorporating whole foods in their natural state or ingredients derived directly from whole foods.
On the agricultural side, Shavuot celebrates the completion of the 7-week period of counting the Omer. The Omer begins on Passover, with the barley harvest, and culminates on Shavuot, with the offering of the "first fruits" of the wheat harvest.