Woman Investigates Mysterious Recipes Found On Grave Stones

(NewsReady.com) – Families put all sorts of messages on gravestones when someone they love dies. Many are endearing, while some are profane. One woman is investigating recipes left on stones.

In August 2021, Rosie Grant, now 33, was walking through the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, when she found a gravestone designed to look like it had an open book on top of it. When she walked over to it, she saw that it was for a woman named Naomi Miller-Dawson and written on the stone “pages” was her recipe for spritz cookies.

Were there a “Great Green-Wood Bake-Off,” the champion would surely be selected based on their bake of the now infamous Spritz Cookies à la Naomi Miller-Dawson (Lot 44807, Grave 205, Sec. 122/127/A)! 📸 Stacy Locke 1/3 pic.twitter.com/l3JYBE1z0A

— The Green-Wood Cemetery (@GreenWoodHF) October 4, 2021

The recipe did not include instructions, but Grant went home and made it anyway. She even brought some back to the graveyard to enjoy with the deceased woman. After that, she decided to research and find out if other people had also left recipes on their stones.

Over the last two years, Grant has documented her journey to find gravestone recipes on social media. So far, she has discovered 23 of them, most belonging to women. The majority of the recipes left behind are for tasty desserts. In an Instagram video, she said they have changed how she “thought about death and ways to be memorialized.”

One of the most famous gravestone recipes is on the grave of Martha Kathryn Kirkham Andrews at Logan City Cemetery in Utah. Years before she passed away, her fudge recipe was carved into the stone she would one day share with her husband, Wade Huff Andrews. Their daughter, Janice Johnson, told The New York Times that her parents wanted their grave to reflect their lives, and her mother was known for making fudge.

Grant explained that she views cemeteries as “open-air museum[s].” She intends to continue traveling the country to find the recipes people have left behind for everyone to enjoy.