November 15, 2025 • 20 mins
In this episode, West Michigan Weekend host Phil Tower welcomes Rosie Grant, author, digital archivist, and the passionate & tireless creator behind @GhostlyArchive.
Rosie’s new book is: To Die For: A Cookbook of Gravestone Recipes.
Rosie's book is an inspiring collection of recipes preserved on gravestones, with fascinating interviews from the families, celebrating the beloved food legacies of their dearly departed.
As the founder and creator behind @GhostlyArchive, Rosie has been searching out and documenting this interesting phenomenon.
Rosie credits her parents with helping to stir her fascination with ghosts and graveyards.
In To Die For, Rosie collects 40 recipes she’s found across the globe, carved into headstones or associated with a grave that has a story to share.
An interview with the remaining family members accompanies each recipe, plus photography of the food, the gravestone, and any memorabilia the family wanted to share.
Her book is available wherever books are sold. If you can, shop local!
Rosie’s amazing website: Ghostly Archive
Follow Rosie on Instagram
Rosie Grant on TikTok
Helen Rose Sweers Gravestone in Cutlerville, MI
Rosie’s new book is: To Die For: A Cookbook of Gravestone Recipes.
Rosie's book is an inspiring collection of recipes preserved on gravestones, with fascinating interviews from the families, celebrating the beloved food legacies of their dearly departed.
As the founder and creator behind @GhostlyArchive, Rosie has been searching out and documenting this interesting phenomenon.
Rosie credits her parents with helping to stir her fascination with ghosts and graveyards.
In To Die For, Rosie collects 40 recipes she’s found across the globe, carved into headstones or associated with a grave that has a story to share.
An interview with the remaining family members accompanies each recipe, plus photography of the food, the gravestone, and any memorabilia the family wanted to share.
Her book is available wherever books are sold. If you can, shop local!
Rosie’s amazing website: Ghostly Archive
Follow Rosie on Instagram
Rosie Grant on TikTok
Helen Rose Sweers Gravestone in Cutlerville, MI
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is iHeartRadio's West Michigan Weekend. West Michigan Weekend is
a weekly programmed designed to inform and enlightened on a
wide range of public policy issues, as well as news
and current events. Now here's your host, Phil Tower.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I have to tell you I'm really excited for this
segment because every now and then I come across the
story just just amazing. And chances are you've heard about
Rosie Grant. She's a lot of things. She's a fascinating human.
She's also an author of a brand new book you're
going to want to run and get, or at least
order online but by local if you can. She's a
(00:40):
digital archivist, she is a social media rock star, and
she's also a passionate and tireless creator behind at Ghostly Archive,
something she's been doing a long time, and we're going
to tell you what that is. First of all, her
brand new book is To Die For, a cookbook of
gravestone recipes. Rosie Grant, Welcome to West Michigan Weekend.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Thank you so much for having me. It's honor to
be here.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
So Rosie and I were just talking a little bit
before we officially went on the air with this conversation,
and she told me there's a grand rapids component to
dive force. So that's a tease for our listing audience
to stay tuned because we'll talk about that coming up
in just a little bit. I am intensely curious, and
I don't want to ask you all the questions you've
(01:27):
been asked a hundred times because I've heard, I've heard
your interviews and you're just a wonderful guest. But I
want to, first of all start out with what lit
the spark for this curiosity? What was the tipping point
where you said, oh, my goodness, this is really fascinating.
I'm onto something here.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Well, I probably have to give credit to my parents,
but you're both those tour guides in Alexandria, Virginia, and
so I think that's kind of my entry point in
the cemetery. And then the next skipping point was I
did an internship that Congressional Cemetery in Washington, d C.
As part of my library science degree, and it was
(02:06):
it was so life changing in so many wonderful ways.
I found cemeteries to be, you know, one of these
places that I wouldn't have thought to spend too much
time in outside of maybe a history tour visiting a
loved one. And this particular cemetery is part of sort
of this new wave of cemeteries that are just these
welcome community spaces. They host events, they have death programming
(02:28):
and end of life planning, they have preservation classes. They
even have these really popular book clubs and tours. And
so I just found that very inspirational. And then yes,
of course, coming across my first grave strein recipe, which
I think just started everything.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah, and where did you discover that, Rosie?
Speaker 3 (02:47):
So the very first one was the grave of a
woman named Naomi. She's buried in Brooklyn, New York, and
she has a sprits cookie recipe on her gravestone. And
if you see a photo of Naomi, it looks like
this open cookbook. So when you walk up to it,
it literally looks like, you know, the ingredients written on
the face of that book. It's so beautiful and it's
really a wonderful recipe. So I just found it the
(03:09):
coolest idea when I first saw one, I tried it
and I put the process on TikTok, and yeah, that
definitely kicks started everything else.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
I want to plug your TikTok. First of all, you
can follow at ghostly dot archive on Instagram and your
TikTok is Rosie. It's both dangerous and beautiful at the
same time. Two hundred and seven thousand followers on TikTok
trust me, it is a little bit of dictive, but
it's absolutely beautiful. I love how you set music to
(03:39):
the videos when you go to the I don't want
to give too much away, but just when you go
make your visits to the graveyard, do you know how
many cemeteries total you visited so far?
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Golly, at this point over one thousand, and I should say, so,
you know, I've come across about fifty two gravest and
recipes so far, and you know, you featured in the book,
and those are the ones that I met with the
families and I got permissions and of course got the stories.
But in the process, yeah, I visited. Every time I travel,
I would visit, you know, a dozen other cemeteries. So
(04:13):
I then to cemetery is literally all over North America
and they're all very different, and you know, of course
there's lots of commonalities too. Yeah, it's beautiful, so I
should say also Grand Rapids has some really good cemeteries.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yeah, and I got to say something, what's beautiful about this?
And I know you discovered that through this process of
connecting these recipes on tombstones with the people and their
legacies and their stories. And you have a section in
the beginning of the book. I want to read this
for our listeners, Rosie, because it's beautiful. It says, this
book is an invitation to be inspired by those who
(04:48):
chose to link their legacies to food, perhaps the most
universal language, memory and love. It's just beautiful and it
really is a connective thing. I remember, remember my Greek grandmother,
my Yaya, from Greek food.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
It was to die for.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
And anytime I smell Greek food, I'm instantly transported back
to my Yaya's house in ann Arbor, Michigan, and the
buckle Va and the Kolia Rakias and the Greeks have
an egg lemon soup which she could have put like
five recipes on her too Stille. But everybody, all of
(05:27):
Yaya's grandchildren, we all just loved her for food. So
food is this really universal connector, and it's the beautiful
thing about to die for with these people who were
so proud of their recipes. They wanted their tombstone to
memorialize them that way.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
What a concept, so beautiful, and I love that you
have these beautiful memories in nostalgia with your Yaya, and
you have these individual recipes and smells and tastes that
all are connected to her. And I think it's exactly
that we all have that recipe. So yeah. For the
surface level, of course, the idea of a recipe coming
from someone's gravestone is so cool, But then even you
(06:07):
take it a step throughther of we all have something
that we grew up with that as soon as we
taste it, it brings us back to a grandparents' kitchen,
maybe our dad grilling on Sundays, or you know, go
into our friend's barbecue, and it's just these really important
tastes and smells and things that we grew up with.
Everyone has their own version of that, and it's so
cool to be able to connect to that.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Rosie Grant is with us, author of a brand new
book creating a lot of buzz not only on social
media but in traditional media. To Die For a cookbook
of gravestone recipes. It's available wherever books are sold by
local if you can. Otherwise you can just get it
anyplace online. I want to put a plug in for
(06:49):
your also really awesome website, ghostly archive dot com. I'm
going to be personal here for a moment. This really
blew me away. I was looking when I was doing
some research for this conversation we're having on the air
right now, the resources about end of life thoughts. It's
so hard, Rosie. It's so hard for people to talk
(07:12):
about how they want to remember be remembered the important
things to them, those end of life conversations. And you
actually created a beautiful, beautiful thing at ghostly archive dot
com with resources to kind of mark these conversations. What
inspired this, Oh.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Man, I was so inspired by so many people who
came before me. And thank you so much for saying, Matt,
I appreciate it because it is really hard, and I
so relate to the people who just kind of talk
through of like there's these taboo topics and it's uncomfortable
and a little scary of just talking about the fact
that we will all pass away someday, and my own
(07:50):
family has a lot of discomfort around that, and I think,
you know, that's the beauty of the Griefstown recipe, and
people have decided to do this. It feels to me
more of like a sell of someone, and it feels
so for the living. And so I was very inspired
by something called the death Positive movement, which was started
by people in hospice, and it's just this idea that
(08:12):
people in society are healthier if we have these conversations
with loved ones. And it can start really small of
like how do you want to be remembered, and of
course they can go into do you want to be
in a cemetery? Do you want the song played at
your funeral? One of the gravestone families, there's this woman
buried in Nova Scotia and her daughter talked about every
(08:32):
time she sees a white feather, it's a sign from
her mom. So it's just these little signs of a
person from you know, years later and legacies later. And
so it doesn't really matter how it is or what
you want if we're persons a little bit different. But yeah,
I've found that so inspiring. So the resources themselves are
inspired by death doulas who do a lot of really
(08:54):
amazing work. So yeah, I've just taken a lot from them.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah, it's really really inspiring to die for is Rosie's
new book, a cookbook of gravestone recipes. Social media? You're
so good at it, it's probably just like second nature
to you. But to publish a book pro see, I mean,
was that a little dauntry? You're a little scary at first?
Talk about how you kind of approached that of.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Okay, yeah, yeah, it was very daunting. I mean it
started so organically. I mean, this whole process came from
me just trying to be a librarian. So I had
done the internship because it was in early days of
the pandemic and a lot of places were closed, and
so the internship was one of the few places that
(09:42):
was open to people trying to get experience in archives.
And then yeah, the very first graves gen recipe, I
just thought one person did this? How cool? When I
learned a second person, and then a third person, and
then a fourth, and then I started this sort of
librarian adjacent data map of like, who are how many
people did this? And I know when I got to
(10:04):
ten people, I thought, wow, that's incredible. And then when
I was at about twenty recipes, some people started coming
forward saying, you know, would you be interested in a book,
and I thought like, I mean, what a hail Mary
throw that should be if it could happen. Of not
only have to you know, document each of these people,
confirm where they are learner stories, and then of course
(10:25):
reach out to all of the families to see if
they want to throw up when included, how they felt
about it, maybe they didn't want them included. So it
was years in the making, but every time I interviewed
a new family and got more stories, it just felt
like more things clicked together. Every time I got to
visit a new cemetery and in some cases cook with
(10:45):
the families if they were open to it, which was
the most just rewarding experience. There's nothing like gathering in
a kitchen with people and you're cooking together and telling stories,
and it just felt so fulfilling. So it's been, yeah,
easily the hardest thing I've ever done and worked on.
And definitely a lot of traveling and a lot of
(11:06):
you know, crazy wild travel stories, but then so much
beautiful just storytelling about each of these home cooks. So yeah,
I'm very much in a pinch me moment to be here.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Yeah, it's just a wonderful story and I had a
friend of mine send me an email about the book,
and then I just kind of went down the rabbit
hole and I've been lost for a month. So I'm
to be able to talk with you on the radio
and share this with our thousands of iHeartRadio listeners in
West Michigan. It's so cool. I want to ask you though,
(11:42):
going into these homes, meeting the people behind the recipes
on the gravestones, which is a very personal thing. I
think about my mom passed away several years ago, but
I think about my mom's handwritten recipes that are still there,
some from my yahya. Were there any particular objects or
things as you went into some of these homes, made
(12:02):
these recipes or spoke with the families of the loved
ones who had had their recipes put on, anything that
stuck with you, some physical things from momentoes that you
just said.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Oh my gosh, I love that question. I don't know
if I've been asked up before. And yeah, that's so
beautiful that you still have your mom And yeah, Yea's
handwritten cards. I think, gosh, that is so precious. And yeah,
as a matter of fact, so this wasn't necessarily named up,
but it was more Easter eggs for the families. Throughout
the cookbook. As it would go around, I would pick
(12:32):
up usually community cookbooks, sometimes community cookbooks that the person's
recipe was featured in, maybe a their local church or
some sort of volunteer group that they were part of.
Sometimes it was a spoon or actually, in the case
of in Grand Rapids, there's this place called the Chew
Chew Grill, and there's a classic.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
So the woman who had been part of the founding
a couple of the Chew Choo Grill, she has a
recipe on her grace stone. And so when I went
to the two Choo Grill, got breakfast there, which was incredible,
and they have these really beautiful handmade ornaments of the
grill itself, so I got one of those to include.
So a lot of them have these little Easter eggs
(13:12):
that were picked up a wooden spoon, which was an
inside joke, and the family and this one and family
in Alaska. Yeah, sometimes it was the community cookbook itself,
or even in the case of the woman with the
white feather, we brought in a white feather just because
her daughter would always say, well, that's the time for mom.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
What a story, What a story? Rosie Grant. Her new
book is to Die For, a cookbook of gravestone recipes.
I cannot think of a better gift for the holidays.
And just what I love about it is you've got photos.
You've just got You've got so many stories in here,
and so many personal stories just beyond the recipes. And
I know you've tried a lot of them. I heard
(13:52):
you tell Scott Simon from NPR in an interview You did,
I think a couple of years ago about the Sprits cookies.
I know the recipe. He has like a pound of butter.
What is the thing to die for? The spritz cookie?
It's a beautiful looking cookie when I look at the photo.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
What's up with that?
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Rosie?
Speaker 3 (14:12):
I remember that was actually one of my very first interviews,
when I think I only knew about maybe up to
five recipes, a very very few of them. And so yeah,
I love chatting about it with Scott, especially because he
shared that his dad has a joke on his gravestone
of like I told you I was sick, which I
don't know if that part aired, but I thought that
(14:34):
was a really funny thing that his dad has on
his grapestone, and yeah there is butter, but it also
makes quite a lot of cookies. If anything, I think
the you know, classic cookie recipe, especially from a certain time.
There are some recipes with margarine, and in the case
of if the families have now swapped to butter, we
would say you can use butter instead, but some of
(14:55):
them still have older ingredients. You know, people get to
choose if they want to use is or not, but
at least for us, it was important to try to
recreate it how the families did. There are some with
a layo, which I didn't know what a lao was,
which is an alternatate fat that some people might have
used to cook with. So definitely a fun process and
trying to get some of the ingredients. Luckily nothing that
(15:17):
will like literally be to die for, just with the
metaphorical of they're delicious. I have to say the hardest
ingredient to fine was guava in Los Angeles, which is
where I'm at now, which the woman who it's a
Florida cobbler, and she would go outside of her house
and pick the squava just from a tree outside and
I you know, traveled all over California trying to get
(15:41):
some guava and eventually found one at a local bakery,
and they shared their secret of how they get guava.
But yeah, luckily the rest of them, you know, whether
or not you're a butter lover, lots of different options
of ingredients.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Yeah, that's great. You should have gotten an answer on
TikTok like in about thirty eight seconds.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Yeah, Oh, it's so true.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
I think you could have had somebody like ship it
to you. Rosie. Rosie Grant is the author To Die For,
a cookbook of gravestone recipes. You said earlier you've been
through like a thousand You've visited like a thousand cemeteries
unrelated to the grave sites and the beautiful recipes that
make up To Die For.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Was there one.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Cemetery that was just just breathtakingly beautiful or peaceful that
you just went this, Oh my gosh, just experiencing it.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Oh my gosh, there are so many. And yeah, again,
another really good question. There's actually this one cemetery that's
kind of in central Michigan that I was really struck by.
I was traveling to visit a very particular Yeah, I
have to look up the name of the cemetery itself.
The gentleman there with a really interesting story. His grace
(16:54):
John went missing for years and eventually was discovered in
someone's home for an estates sale. The woman who's been
using it as a fudge slab, and it made for
really just the marble grave had been turned on its
back and so she'd been using it to make fudge
for years, and eventually she passed away. And this you
(17:15):
know marble, it had been sold as a fudge lab.
But someone turned it over and they said, this is
somebody's gravestone, and so they conducted incredible I know, and
so they contacted this local historical society and you know,
they made this work to get it back to the
person it belonged to, and so it was replaced that
you can still see the markings of the years of
(17:37):
fudge that went into it. But I have to say
when I went there, I just found it a really
peaceful and beautiful cemetery. They were deer there when I
drove in. I went at pretty much sunset, so just
there was this like beautiful summer twilight that was sitting
on the cemetery. I found that one and that was
sort of for me the beginning of this, like sort
(17:57):
of mass travel around the US. They went last summer
of visiting and documenting a lot of them. So I
went to that one on the way to Grand Rapids,
and it just holds a special place in my heart.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
I am so touched. I could go on for another hour,
but we have to wrap this up. I want to
thank you so much. Rosie Grant, author Digital Archive is.
She's got a degree in library science. Maybe someday you'll
run a library. Who knows you're going to have You're
gonna be amazing and I am so grateful for the
(18:29):
generosity of your time. Her new book is to Die For,
a cookbook of gravestone recipes. Please visit her amazing website
ghostly archive dot com. You can follow her on TikTok,
ghostly archive and at ghostly dot archive on Instagram. Just
absolutely amazing. I have really enjoyed speaking with you, Rosie.
(18:50):
Is there anything I didn't ask you wanted to share
with our listeners?
Speaker 3 (18:53):
No, I thought you have such beautiful questions. Thank you
so much for having me. And yeah, if people have
any stone recipes that they know about her unusual memorials
that they just want to share I'm always ears for bat.
People send me messages of interesting memorials all over the
world pretty much daily, and it's my favorite thing. So
(19:14):
thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
And real quickly, there were a couple of gravestones in
Grand Rapids. We're not going to say where that actually
had recipes, right.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Yeah, that's great. There's a woman named don and she
has her chocolate chip cookie recipes and it's really sweet.
So on the back of her grave it's her cookie
recipe and she's a woman who was connected to the
two two Girl. And then on the front side it
has these little stockings because she was a very avid
knitter and she would just make these for her family.
(19:44):
So beautiful. And there's another woman that lived bit south
of Grand Rapids who her name was Helen, but she
has this Texas she cake and it is literally one
of the best shee cakes I've ever had. It's technically
a traditional funeral cake, but she was a beautician and
she would make it for years. You basically take hot
(20:06):
boiling water and you mix it in with the dough
and so it's this really moist cake. So yeah, those
are the two Grand Rapids. Folks just love.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
It, absolutely love it. Rosie Grant, author of To Die For,
a cookbook of gravestone recipes, with us on this segment
of West Michigan Weekend. Rosie, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Thank you you've been listening to iHeartRadio's West Michigan Weekend.
West Michigan Weekend is a production of Wood Radio and
iHeartRadio
This is iHeartRadio's West Michigan Weekend. West Michigan Weekend is
a weekly programmed designed to inform and enlightened on a
wide range of public policy issues, as well as news
and current events. Now here's your host, Phil Tower.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I have to tell you I'm really excited for this
segment because every now and then I come across the
story just just amazing. And chances are you've heard about
Rosie Grant. She's a lot of things. She's a fascinating human.
She's also an author of a brand new book you're
going to want to run and get, or at least
order online but by local if you can. She's a
(00:40):
digital archivist, she is a social media rock star, and
she's also a passionate and tireless creator behind at Ghostly Archive,
something she's been doing a long time, and we're going
to tell you what that is. First of all, her
brand new book is To Die For, a cookbook of
gravestone recipes. Rosie Grant, Welcome to West Michigan Weekend.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Thank you so much for having me. It's honor to
be here.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
So Rosie and I were just talking a little bit
before we officially went on the air with this conversation,
and she told me there's a grand rapids component to
dive force. So that's a tease for our listing audience
to stay tuned because we'll talk about that coming up
in just a little bit. I am intensely curious, and
I don't want to ask you all the questions you've
(01:27):
been asked a hundred times because I've heard, I've heard
your interviews and you're just a wonderful guest. But I
want to, first of all start out with what lit
the spark for this curiosity? What was the tipping point
where you said, oh, my goodness, this is really fascinating.
I'm onto something here.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Well, I probably have to give credit to my parents,
but you're both those tour guides in Alexandria, Virginia, and
so I think that's kind of my entry point in
the cemetery. And then the next skipping point was I
did an internship that Congressional Cemetery in Washington, d C.
As part of my library science degree, and it was
(02:06):
it was so life changing in so many wonderful ways.
I found cemeteries to be, you know, one of these
places that I wouldn't have thought to spend too much
time in outside of maybe a history tour visiting a
loved one. And this particular cemetery is part of sort
of this new wave of cemeteries that are just these
welcome community spaces. They host events, they have death programming
(02:28):
and end of life planning, they have preservation classes. They
even have these really popular book clubs and tours. And
so I just found that very inspirational. And then yes,
of course, coming across my first grave strein recipe, which
I think just started everything.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Yeah, and where did you discover that, Rosie?
Speaker 3 (02:47):
So the very first one was the grave of a
woman named Naomi. She's buried in Brooklyn, New York, and
she has a sprits cookie recipe on her gravestone. And
if you see a photo of Naomi, it looks like
this open cookbook. So when you walk up to it,
it literally looks like, you know, the ingredients written on
the face of that book. It's so beautiful and it's
really a wonderful recipe. So I just found it the
(03:09):
coolest idea when I first saw one, I tried it
and I put the process on TikTok, and yeah, that
definitely kicks started everything else.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
I want to plug your TikTok. First of all, you
can follow at ghostly dot archive on Instagram and your
TikTok is Rosie. It's both dangerous and beautiful at the
same time. Two hundred and seven thousand followers on TikTok
trust me, it is a little bit of dictive, but
it's absolutely beautiful. I love how you set music to
(03:39):
the videos when you go to the I don't want
to give too much away, but just when you go
make your visits to the graveyard, do you know how
many cemeteries total you visited so far?
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Golly, at this point over one thousand, and I should say, so,
you know, I've come across about fifty two gravest and
recipes so far, and you know, you featured in the book,
and those are the ones that I met with the
families and I got permissions and of course got the stories.
But in the process, yeah, I visited. Every time I travel,
I would visit, you know, a dozen other cemeteries. So
(04:13):
I then to cemetery is literally all over North America
and they're all very different, and you know, of course
there's lots of commonalities too. Yeah, it's beautiful, so I
should say also Grand Rapids has some really good cemeteries.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yeah, and I got to say something, what's beautiful about this?
And I know you discovered that through this process of
connecting these recipes on tombstones with the people and their
legacies and their stories. And you have a section in
the beginning of the book. I want to read this
for our listeners, Rosie, because it's beautiful. It says, this
book is an invitation to be inspired by those who
(04:48):
chose to link their legacies to food, perhaps the most
universal language, memory and love. It's just beautiful and it
really is a connective thing. I remember, remember my Greek grandmother,
my Yaya, from Greek food.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
It was to die for.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
And anytime I smell Greek food, I'm instantly transported back
to my Yaya's house in ann Arbor, Michigan, and the
buckle Va and the Kolia Rakias and the Greeks have
an egg lemon soup which she could have put like
five recipes on her too Stille. But everybody, all of
(05:27):
Yaya's grandchildren, we all just loved her for food. So
food is this really universal connector, and it's the beautiful
thing about to die for with these people who were
so proud of their recipes. They wanted their tombstone to
memorialize them that way.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
What a concept, so beautiful, and I love that you
have these beautiful memories in nostalgia with your Yaya, and
you have these individual recipes and smells and tastes that
all are connected to her. And I think it's exactly
that we all have that recipe. So yeah. For the
surface level, of course, the idea of a recipe coming
from someone's gravestone is so cool, But then even you
(06:07):
take it a step throughther of we all have something
that we grew up with that as soon as we
taste it, it brings us back to a grandparents' kitchen,
maybe our dad grilling on Sundays, or you know, go
into our friend's barbecue, and it's just these really important
tastes and smells and things that we grew up with.
Everyone has their own version of that, and it's so
cool to be able to connect to that.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Rosie Grant is with us, author of a brand new
book creating a lot of buzz not only on social
media but in traditional media. To Die For a cookbook
of gravestone recipes. It's available wherever books are sold by
local if you can. Otherwise you can just get it
anyplace online. I want to put a plug in for
(06:49):
your also really awesome website, ghostly archive dot com. I'm
going to be personal here for a moment. This really
blew me away. I was looking when I was doing
some research for this conversation we're having on the air
right now, the resources about end of life thoughts. It's
so hard, Rosie. It's so hard for people to talk
(07:12):
about how they want to remember be remembered the important
things to them, those end of life conversations. And you
actually created a beautiful, beautiful thing at ghostly archive dot
com with resources to kind of mark these conversations. What
inspired this, Oh.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Man, I was so inspired by so many people who
came before me. And thank you so much for saying, Matt,
I appreciate it because it is really hard, and I
so relate to the people who just kind of talk
through of like there's these taboo topics and it's uncomfortable
and a little scary of just talking about the fact
that we will all pass away someday, and my own
(07:50):
family has a lot of discomfort around that, and I think,
you know, that's the beauty of the Griefstown recipe, and
people have decided to do this. It feels to me
more of like a sell of someone, and it feels
so for the living. And so I was very inspired
by something called the death Positive movement, which was started
by people in hospice, and it's just this idea that
(08:12):
people in society are healthier if we have these conversations
with loved ones. And it can start really small of
like how do you want to be remembered, and of
course they can go into do you want to be
in a cemetery? Do you want the song played at
your funeral? One of the gravestone families, there's this woman
buried in Nova Scotia and her daughter talked about every
(08:32):
time she sees a white feather, it's a sign from
her mom. So it's just these little signs of a
person from you know, years later and legacies later. And
so it doesn't really matter how it is or what
you want if we're persons a little bit different. But yeah,
I've found that so inspiring. So the resources themselves are
inspired by death doulas who do a lot of really
(08:54):
amazing work. So yeah, I've just taken a lot from them.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Yeah, it's really really inspiring to die for is Rosie's
new book, a cookbook of gravestone recipes. Social media? You're
so good at it, it's probably just like second nature
to you. But to publish a book pro see, I mean,
was that a little dauntry? You're a little scary at first?
Talk about how you kind of approached that of.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Okay, yeah, yeah, it was very daunting. I mean it
started so organically. I mean, this whole process came from
me just trying to be a librarian. So I had
done the internship because it was in early days of
the pandemic and a lot of places were closed, and
so the internship was one of the few places that
(09:42):
was open to people trying to get experience in archives.
And then yeah, the very first graves gen recipe, I
just thought one person did this? How cool? When I
learned a second person, and then a third person, and
then a fourth, and then I started this sort of
librarian adjacent data map of like, who are how many
people did this? And I know when I got to
(10:04):
ten people, I thought, wow, that's incredible. And then when
I was at about twenty recipes, some people started coming
forward saying, you know, would you be interested in a book,
and I thought like, I mean, what a hail Mary
throw that should be if it could happen. Of not
only have to you know, document each of these people,
confirm where they are learner stories, and then of course
(10:25):
reach out to all of the families to see if
they want to throw up when included, how they felt
about it, maybe they didn't want them included. So it
was years in the making, but every time I interviewed
a new family and got more stories, it just felt
like more things clicked together. Every time I got to
visit a new cemetery and in some cases cook with
(10:45):
the families if they were open to it, which was
the most just rewarding experience. There's nothing like gathering in
a kitchen with people and you're cooking together and telling stories,
and it just felt so fulfilling. So it's been, yeah,
easily the hardest thing I've ever done and worked on.
And definitely a lot of traveling and a lot of
(11:06):
you know, crazy wild travel stories, but then so much
beautiful just storytelling about each of these home cooks. So yeah,
I'm very much in a pinch me moment to be here.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Yeah, it's just a wonderful story and I had a
friend of mine send me an email about the book,
and then I just kind of went down the rabbit
hole and I've been lost for a month. So I'm
to be able to talk with you on the radio
and share this with our thousands of iHeartRadio listeners in
West Michigan. It's so cool. I want to ask you though,
(11:42):
going into these homes, meeting the people behind the recipes
on the gravestones, which is a very personal thing. I
think about my mom passed away several years ago, but
I think about my mom's handwritten recipes that are still there,
some from my yahya. Were there any particular objects or
things as you went into some of these homes, made
(12:02):
these recipes or spoke with the families of the loved
ones who had had their recipes put on, anything that
stuck with you, some physical things from momentoes that you
just said.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Oh my gosh, I love that question. I don't know
if I've been asked up before. And yeah, that's so
beautiful that you still have your mom And yeah, Yea's
handwritten cards. I think, gosh, that is so precious. And yeah,
as a matter of fact, so this wasn't necessarily named up,
but it was more Easter eggs for the families. Throughout
the cookbook. As it would go around, I would pick
(12:32):
up usually community cookbooks, sometimes community cookbooks that the person's
recipe was featured in, maybe a their local church or
some sort of volunteer group that they were part of.
Sometimes it was a spoon or actually, in the case
of in Grand Rapids, there's this place called the Chew
Chew Grill, and there's a classic.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
So the woman who had been part of the founding
a couple of the Chew Choo Grill, she has a
recipe on her grace stone. And so when I went
to the two Choo Grill, got breakfast there, which was incredible,
and they have these really beautiful handmade ornaments of the
grill itself, so I got one of those to include.
So a lot of them have these little Easter eggs
(13:12):
that were picked up a wooden spoon, which was an
inside joke, and the family and this one and family
in Alaska. Yeah, sometimes it was the community cookbook itself,
or even in the case of the woman with the
white feather, we brought in a white feather just because
her daughter would always say, well, that's the time for mom.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
What a story, What a story? Rosie Grant. Her new
book is to Die For, a cookbook of gravestone recipes.
I cannot think of a better gift for the holidays.
And just what I love about it is you've got photos.
You've just got You've got so many stories in here,
and so many personal stories just beyond the recipes. And
I know you've tried a lot of them. I heard
(13:52):
you tell Scott Simon from NPR in an interview You did,
I think a couple of years ago about the Sprits cookies.
I know the recipe. He has like a pound of butter.
What is the thing to die for? The spritz cookie?
It's a beautiful looking cookie when I look at the photo.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
What's up with that?
Speaker 2 (14:11):
Rosie?
Speaker 3 (14:12):
I remember that was actually one of my very first interviews,
when I think I only knew about maybe up to
five recipes, a very very few of them. And so yeah,
I love chatting about it with Scott, especially because he
shared that his dad has a joke on his gravestone
of like I told you I was sick, which I
don't know if that part aired, but I thought that
(14:34):
was a really funny thing that his dad has on
his grapestone, and yeah there is butter, but it also
makes quite a lot of cookies. If anything, I think
the you know, classic cookie recipe, especially from a certain time.
There are some recipes with margarine, and in the case
of if the families have now swapped to butter, we
would say you can use butter instead, but some of
(14:55):
them still have older ingredients. You know, people get to
choose if they want to use is or not, but
at least for us, it was important to try to
recreate it how the families did. There are some with
a layo, which I didn't know what a lao was,
which is an alternatate fat that some people might have
used to cook with. So definitely a fun process and
trying to get some of the ingredients. Luckily nothing that
(15:17):
will like literally be to die for, just with the
metaphorical of they're delicious. I have to say the hardest
ingredient to fine was guava in Los Angeles, which is
where I'm at now, which the woman who it's a
Florida cobbler, and she would go outside of her house
and pick the squava just from a tree outside and
I you know, traveled all over California trying to get
(15:41):
some guava and eventually found one at a local bakery,
and they shared their secret of how they get guava.
But yeah, luckily the rest of them, you know, whether
or not you're a butter lover, lots of different options
of ingredients.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Yeah, that's great. You should have gotten an answer on
TikTok like in about thirty eight seconds.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
Yeah, Oh, it's so true.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
I think you could have had somebody like ship it
to you. Rosie. Rosie Grant is the author To Die For,
a cookbook of gravestone recipes. You said earlier you've been
through like a thousand You've visited like a thousand cemeteries
unrelated to the grave sites and the beautiful recipes that
make up To Die For.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Was there one.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Cemetery that was just just breathtakingly beautiful or peaceful that
you just went this, Oh my gosh, just experiencing it.
Speaker 3 (16:33):
Oh my gosh, there are so many. And yeah, again,
another really good question. There's actually this one cemetery that's
kind of in central Michigan that I was really struck by.
I was traveling to visit a very particular Yeah, I
have to look up the name of the cemetery itself.
The gentleman there with a really interesting story. His grace
(16:54):
John went missing for years and eventually was discovered in
someone's home for an estates sale. The woman who's been
using it as a fudge slab, and it made for
really just the marble grave had been turned on its
back and so she'd been using it to make fudge
for years, and eventually she passed away. And this you
(17:15):
know marble, it had been sold as a fudge lab.
But someone turned it over and they said, this is
somebody's gravestone, and so they conducted incredible I know, and
so they contacted this local historical society and you know,
they made this work to get it back to the
person it belonged to, and so it was replaced that
you can still see the markings of the years of
(17:37):
fudge that went into it. But I have to say
when I went there, I just found it a really
peaceful and beautiful cemetery. They were deer there when I
drove in. I went at pretty much sunset, so just
there was this like beautiful summer twilight that was sitting
on the cemetery. I found that one and that was
sort of for me the beginning of this, like sort
(17:57):
of mass travel around the US. They went last summer
of visiting and documenting a lot of them. So I
went to that one on the way to Grand Rapids,
and it just holds a special place in my heart.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
I am so touched. I could go on for another hour,
but we have to wrap this up. I want to
thank you so much. Rosie Grant, author Digital Archive is.
She's got a degree in library science. Maybe someday you'll
run a library. Who knows you're going to have You're
gonna be amazing and I am so grateful for the
(18:29):
generosity of your time. Her new book is to Die For,
a cookbook of gravestone recipes. Please visit her amazing website
ghostly archive dot com. You can follow her on TikTok,
ghostly archive and at ghostly dot archive on Instagram. Just
absolutely amazing. I have really enjoyed speaking with you, Rosie.
(18:50):
Is there anything I didn't ask you wanted to share
with our listeners?
Speaker 3 (18:53):
No, I thought you have such beautiful questions. Thank you
so much for having me. And yeah, if people have
any stone recipes that they know about her unusual memorials
that they just want to share I'm always ears for bat.
People send me messages of interesting memorials all over the
world pretty much daily, and it's my favorite thing. So
(19:14):
thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
And real quickly, there were a couple of gravestones in
Grand Rapids. We're not going to say where that actually
had recipes, right.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Yeah, that's great. There's a woman named don and she
has her chocolate chip cookie recipes and it's really sweet.
So on the back of her grave it's her cookie
recipe and she's a woman who was connected to the
two two Girl. And then on the front side it
has these little stockings because she was a very avid
knitter and she would just make these for her family.
(19:44):
So beautiful. And there's another woman that lived bit south
of Grand Rapids who her name was Helen, but she
has this Texas she cake and it is literally one
of the best shee cakes I've ever had. It's technically
a traditional funeral cake, but she was a beautician and
she would make it for years. You basically take hot
(20:06):
boiling water and you mix it in with the dough
and so it's this really moist cake. So yeah, those
are the two Grand Rapids. Folks just love.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
It, absolutely love it. Rosie Grant, author of To Die For,
a cookbook of gravestone recipes, with us on this segment
of West Michigan Weekend. Rosie, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Thank you you've been listening to iHeartRadio's West Michigan Weekend.
West Michigan Weekend is a production of Wood Radio and
iHeartRadio
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