Following on from my last post about the recipes on gravestones, I came up with a little project yesterday.
The book is To Die For: A Cookbook of Gravestone Recipes by Rosie Grant. I’ve had a chance to look at it more. It is an American book. She travelled extensively across America and into Canada to find all of the gravestones that had recipes on them. It would have been quite an extensive trip.
I can tell you, recipes on gravestones do not seem to be an Australian thing or more specifically a Tasmanian thing.
Yesterday was a lovely autumn day so I went over to the very large cemetery we have here in Hobart. It has approximately 100,000 people buried and 60,000 cremated remains according to CHAT GPT.
Being the day before Easter I had the place to myself. I parked the car at the river and walked up the hill to the cemetery that lies next to the river. The graves in it go back to the 1800s.
With my phone camera, I walked around the cemetery for more than an hour. I read countless graves, admired the beautiful trees and views of the river and watched the cockatoos that seemed to follow me everywhere. I enjoyed the peace and quiet on a sunny autumn day. Did I find anything written on the gravestones of interest? Nope. Just names and dates. I didn’t see any poetry, recipes, comments outside of a few biblical phrases. Think how much lovelier it would be to read something about the people buried there. There could be so many things to add. Anyway….
There is one area of the place that has only young children’s graves. I’d not ever visited that part of it before. So many children over the years. I couldn’t help but think back to all those years before penicillin and vaccinations for any number of illnesses as well as polio and I became angry again of what that Kennedy idiot in America who is in charge of health does. Decimating the disease data bases from illnesses added from around the world. Discouraging vaccinations, his ignorance is breath taking. Measles is now back in America regularly. I mean, really…..I will stop at those remarks as I don’t want my posts to get political but seeing the hundred or so graves of children who died before they had access to medicines that would have saved their lives is very sad. My own grandmother lost 3 of her 10 children before the age of 5 back in the early 1900s.
On a happier note I did make one of the recipes in the book. It was very easy and doesn’t involve turning an oven on. I’ll put that information here from the photos.
The recipe is for No Bake Chocolate Oatmeal cookies. Easy to fix and tasted very good
Note: I’d take out a bit of the sugar next time. American baked goods are much sweeter than ours. Recipe makes 12 to 15 depending in how big you make each cluster. They harden quite quickly so not long to set.
The Penguin wants to know if you have a favourite biscuit/cookie, cake you love?
Travellin' Penguin 
What a nice project. I love wandering around cemeteries and reading the headstones. I agree with you about wishing their was more info about the person and that’s why I made sure to put stuff that my mom loved on her headstone instead of just her name and dates. If there had been more room I would’ve written a book.
The most interesting cemetery I’ve ever been to was the Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park in Calabasas. A lot of famous people’s pets are buried there, including Lauren Bacall’s dog, Droopy, and Mae West’s monkey, Hopalong Cassidy’s horse… even a lion! Here’s my post and photos: https://intrepidangeleno.wordpress.com/2014/10/12/paying-respects-to-droopy-and-bootsie-los-angeles-pet-memorial-park-in-calabasas/
I’m glad you made one of the recipes from one of the headstones featured in the book. Whose headstone was that one from?
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I would love to see that let cemetery but it would bring me to tears I’m sure. The no bake cookie recipe is from a gravestone in Nome Alaska! The cook;s name was Bonnie.
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I know exactly what you mean about the peacefulness of graveyards and I share your anger about the lack of vaccinations. I used to visit a particular graveyard and was always haunted by a little cluster of children’s graves with the message on the stones “Killed at play”. The story behind it must have been tragic.
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Always sad to see the children.
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Wow, that was a labour of love Pam… I had never heard of recipes on gravestones. I do like looking at old cemeteries but they can be sad as you say.
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Oh yum! And what a pretty plate too:)
I bake cakes and muffins but not much in the way of biscuits. However, I do like making lace biscuits which are made with glucose syrup. You take them out of the oven at just the right moment while they are still soft and roll them round the end of a wooden spoon into a sort of cigar-sized shape and then use them as a garnish on fancy desserts. See here, scroll down. https://www.dvo.com/newsletter/weekly/2018/1-26-342/cooknart3.html
And of course I make a batch of Anzac biscuits every year.
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Sounds good. Will look at the link too.
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