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home > entertaining > Shavuot
Mount Sinai is in the desert. The day Moses received the Torah there, however, it burst into lushness. On Shavuot, we garnish our homes in greenery and flowers as a reminder of this miracle. Luckily for us, it’s much easier to festoon our homes with flowers than it is Mount Sinai. Here are a handful of decorating ideas for your Shavuot dinner table:
- Fill tiny clay pots (available at craft stores) with plants of your choosing, write or stencil your guest names on the front with a gold marker, and use as place cards
 For a kid-friendly, edible centerpiece project, grow a tray of wheat grass and arrange whole fruits like peaches, apples, pears, strawberries, and cherries on it to symbolize the harvest. To grow wheat grass:
- Fill a tray or low bowl with soil
- Spread wheatgrass seeds on the surface (available from garden centers and some health food stores)
- Wait two weeks for it to grow…and there you go!
- Transform your linen napkins into blooms by folding them like a fan and tucking them into the water glasses (empty, of course, no water required for these posies)
- Garnish your dinner plates or salads with edible flowers (available in some specialty grocery stores, mail order catalogs, and from the Web). Some to try: Daylilies, Pansies, Nasturtiums, Roses, Sweet Violets, and Squash flowers
- Sprinkle sugared rose-petals on or around your Shavuot cheesecake or blintzes. To make sugared rose petals:
- Dip rose petals, one by one, into a lightly whisked egg white (important: use only pesticide-free rose petals)
- Coat each side of the petal evenly with castor sugar
- Set out to dry on parchment paper or a baker’s rack for at least a day
- Browse through wedding magazines for other decorating ideas. They’re an inspiring way to keep anyone’s imagination…fertile
next article: The Unbelievable Blintz >
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