#Microblog Monday 299: Funeral Cookbooks
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It feels morbid to talk about funerals in the middle of a pandemic—something I wouldn’t have thought twice about pre-Covid-19—but I really loved this tradition I saw in Atlas Obscura.
Funeral cookbooks.
In Thailand, funeral books preserve memories and photos of a person. They’re handed out at the ceremony as people say goodbye. And some families include recipes that the person made while alive. Isn’t that brilliant? So when you miss them, you can make that dish. And great recipes don’t die out with the person.
I have a chocolate chip cookie recipe that people like that I would include. Or my hamantaschen. Or you can include foods you liked (vs. recipes you created). What would be in your book?
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17 comments
Oooh, I love this. Even hearing the words “zucchini bread” makes me instantly think of my grandma. For me, my walnut caramels would be in there, and my double chocolate bourbon pecan pie. The Christmas tradition coffee cake would have to be there, although it’s certainly not my recipe. I’m also guessing my family would say my beet and black bean burgers come to mind when they think of my cooking, so it wouldn’t all be desert!
My sister made a cookbook called “Ma’s Recipes” of all the things we remembered her making that we loved. When we got our copies, we all argued over the ingredients! She included 3 different variations on some things, because we each had a different take on it (except my one sister, who never wanted to know). I have my own notebook for things I particularly like (mostly cookies), and I hope my daughter will find it useful someday…currently, though, she is terrible at reading things related to cooking. I had to go find her a particular measuring spoon the other day because it was apparently beyond her to find the amount stamped into the metal. I shouldn’t make fun of her, because I have been known to miss adding an ingredient at the correct time myself.
Either my grandmother’s potato salad, or, more likely…. Stouffer’s macaroni & cheese. “Slit the plastic cover to vent. Microwave on high for 8 minutes.” (5 minutes for the small box but is there really any point to the small box?)
Mine would probably include my Christmas shortbread cookies (two different varieties, one inherited from a friend of my mother’s and one from my grandma), and perhaps a casserole (Minnesota hotdish!) or two (likewise from my grandmother or one of my mom’s cousins).
When my mother first got married, my grandmother got a lined school notebook & wrote out dozens of recipes & instructions for cooking all kinds of things for her. About 15-20 years ago, a few years after Grandma died, Mom had it photocopied, put in page protectors & a school-style presentation binder, and gave copies to me & my sister, my cousins’ wives and several other people who knew & appreciated my grandmother’s cooking. She gave the printer a photo of me & my sister as pre-schoolers with Grandma on Christmas Eve, shredding bread slices into crumbs in a bowl for the next day’s turkey stuffing, and they put that on the cover along with the title “Cooking with Gramma.” It’s a treasure! 🙂
This is…kind of amazing and I wonder why I’d never heard of it before. What a fantastic idea.
My daughter loves my pasta sauce, so that would be on the first page of my funeral cookbook.
Mmmm…..Mel’s chocolate chip cookies….mmmmm……
That is a spectacular idea. My husband’s paternal grandmother had a vast number of recipes that made appearances at special occasions. One we have in a cookbook from her denomination. The one I need to get from my SIL (who’s pretty sure she has it) is for the peanut butter cup cookies. These cookies were a peanut butter dough with a soft peanut butter strip in the middle and the bottoms dipped in chocolate – one of my all-time favorite cookies.
If people were putting together a cookbook of memories for me, homemade pizza would probably be included as well as chocolate mousse. I joke that they’re going to have to serve chocolate mousse at my memorial service because that’s one of my all time favorite things to make and eat ;).
I am not a good cook or baker, so maybe they could give out takeout menus at mine? ha ha
I would’ve loved to have my granny’s recipe for Irish brown bread before she died. She baked it daily throughout my childhood (and for years and years before that), and although there are many accessible recipes for Irish brown bread, I’ve never found one that tastes exactly like hers.
The recipe was not written down because she just knew what ingredients to use and in what amounts. Because my sister and I were teenagers when she died, it never occurred to us to ask her to write it down for us.
This is amazing — another way to keep a memory of a person alive! That taste/smell thing is so memory-tied, and I can imagine tasting a cookie and thinking, “Yup, that’s so-and-so.” That would be so incredibly comforting. I feel like Bryce has a lot of recipes that he’s found and tweaked and I’m so glad that he prints them out with his handwriting, because not to be morbid, but those would be a treasure if terrible things happened.
Forgot! Mine would have a sausage and chickpea stew that I make with spinach (must peel the chickpeas! strangely hypnotic and also makes them even more yummy!) and serve over oven-fried polenta rounds. Mmmmm. And maybe my doctored up GF blueberry pancakes.
I love this idea! And thanks so much for the article. I realise after four years of living in Thailand, I’ve never been to a Thai person’s funeral – though I have attended the four or five days of vigil at a funeral/crematorium, and the final good-bye.
I’ve often thought of putting my favourite recipes together in a cookbook, and giving it out to my nieces and nephews for Christmas one year. (Especially as a niece and nephew have asked for some of my recipes.) But this spreads it wider.
I’m often asked for my erbazzone (italian spinach pie) recipe, so maybe I’d include that, my lemon salmon pasta recipe, and my mother’s ginger creams (ginger biscuits joined with icing) recipe that is a family-wide favourite.
Ooh, I’d never heard of hamantaschen – they sound lovely. What filling do you use?
And is there any chance of you sharing your chocolate chip cookie recipe? You know, here? Before you die?
In my culture, we make the deceased favorite foods on anniversaries!
I have a collection of recipes that my Mum put together that are from my Grannie. They’re precious to me, even though I almost never make any of them.
I love this. I have a family cookbook from my wedding shower and it has my grandma’s recipes in it. I always talk about her when my girls and I make it. The funeral cookbook is perfect.
My baklava, which is a modified version of my dad’s. Plus my lasagna…
I laughed and laughed at the Stoeffer’s comment 😂😂
weird … I actually don’t know what I make often enough! My kids would probably say something like lentils. It would not actually be a compliment. (*laughing*) Before, in the old days, it would have been my cupcakes. But it’s been years since those were hanging around the house. Maybe turkey and peas, which is a riff on an Indian dish … murgh keema? Though it’s technically Madhur Jaffery’s. 😉 I do love this idea, though, and I have some recipes that fall into this category …
A few years ago, I put together a digital scrapbook style recipe book for my husband’s family, collecting his grandmother’s recipes; family favorites, that his cousins were requesting of his mom. I added a few of my own family favorites as well. I can send you the PDF, if you like. It’s meant to be printed on 3*5 index cards. Or I can print a copy and mail it to anyone who is interested. I think I have more cards lying around here. I laminated the cards and punched holes in the top and bound them with O rings so they could be used in the kitchen without fear of messing them up. (I was very proud of that gift!)
I would have to say now though, that might two signature dishes (that aren’t hand-me-downs) are incidental potatoes and deli wrapped maple glazed carrots. (It was a bacon wrap recipe, that I modified with pastrami or corned beef.)