Rosie Grant: 0:00

I thought it was the coolest thing. It looks like an open cookbook. You walk up to it and like it's a pedestal. It looks like an open stone book on a pedestal and her ingredients are written out on it. And I just thought, I wonder what that tastes like. So I cooked it and I put it on TikTok and um it went super viral overnight.

Crista Cowan: 0:20

Stories That Live in Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present, and future. I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist. Counting down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of America. Tales of immigration, migration, courage, and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us. So join me for season two as we discover from sea to shining sea the stories that live in us. When you're listening to this, Christmas is just one week away. So maybe this year it's a little late to start thinking about what to get people for the holidays. But you can start planning now for next year. And my guest today has a really unique perspective that I think might give you some ideas about gifts you can give. As you gather for the holidays. One of the things that I love about that is the way that we gather around food. And food plays such an important role in so many holidays. Part of the reason I think why it does and why it's so important to us, why it's so important to me is because of the way that that food connects with memories. Every Christmas we make wassel and minestroni soup and my grandmother's spice cookies. And we remember the people who've left us, and we look around the table at the people who are still with us, and we try to remember to collect the stories to lean into the connection and to preserve those recipes for the next generation. My guest today is Rosie Grant, and she has written a cookbook, but this isn't just any cookbook. This is a book of stories about how those people and their memories connected them with their communities. One story in particular that you're going to hear connects us to the state of Iowa. And the stories of the people from Iowa and the coincidences that happen as Rosie goes there are worth listening to. Enjoy my conversation with Rosie Grant. Well, Rosie, I'm so glad you're here. I'm so excited to talk about your cookbook. But before we do, I'd just love to know a little bit more about you. Um, where are you from? And tell me about where you're living now and tell me about you.

Rosie Grant: 2:59

I would love to. Um, well, I am from Virginia, and I I got my library science degree at the University of Maryland. So the DC, Maryland, Virginia is where I call home. And I'm currently living in Los Angeles. I work at UCLA in the Center for the Study of Women.

Crista Cowan: 3:18

Very cool. I grew up in Los Angeles. So yeah, I love that's my home very much so. It's the best. So fun.

Rosie Grant: 3:27

So why library science? Oh man, I think everyone, the world would be a better place if we all took some library science classes. It was literally a whole program of mostly librarians paying for themselves in school to be better librarians. And they're already, I think, the best librarians, but they were like, how do we be more helpful to people in my community? And I was working at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC. And I was doing communications and their social media and a lot of digital, sort of digital media. And I became really interested in our archives, and I wanted to know more about preservation, how to work with digital archives. And so a lot of archives and library programs are under the same umbrella. So you do an MLIS, a library science degree, and you get to take archive classes within that. And I just was obsessed with community archives. I think they're so great. So this was very much born out of that.

Crista Cowan: 4:28

I love that. Librarians are kind of like the fairy godmothers of their communities. Like I remember as a kid going to story time and just looking up to the librarian like she was just this magical person because she had access to all these books and knowledge and she always had the answers.

Rosie Grant: 4:46

So true. My uncle was a librarian, and I he was my biggest hero as a kid. He loves Halloween and loved his library, and he even volunteer, he's retired now, but still volunteers at his local library. And I just think they're the best. They're like, you know, free community spaces that people can learn whatever they need to do. And I'm just, yeah, of course, they are the fairy godmothers with access to all the books, which is what's more magical than that.

Crista Cowan: 5:13

Right. So I mean archivists. So as a genealogist, archivists, of course, have always had a special place in my heart. And my first job here at Ancestry 21, almost 22 years ago, was uh content acquisition. So I got to work with directly with the archivists, identifying what collections they had that Ancestry could digitize and publish online. And so I just really grew to appreciate that community so much.

Rosie Grant: 5:41

Ah, they were great. It was very funny being in the library and archives classes. You could tell what were the librarian classes and what were the archive ones. The librarians would be like, how do we get all of our stuff out there to people? And the archivists were like, people keep touching the stuff. How do we make sure it'll last 100, 200 years? Because everyone keeps touching all the stuff, which is so great. And yeah, archivists, I have so much appreciation for the like technique that they have. And of course, yeah, with genealogy, it's everything for saving our history.

Crista Cowan: 6:12

Yeah, absolutely. So tell me a little bit about how you went from being in a library and archives program to working at a university. What was that transition all about?

Rosie Grant: 6:23

Yeah, it was definitely, I mean, I love working at a university. I worked at the Department of English at University of Maryland while I was there. They have a very generous um staff, like reciprocal uh agreement so you can get free grad classes, which is quite nice. Um, so that was what paid for my MLIS program. And also working through a university has been so nice for the sake of their the university library is incredible. Um, both at UMD and then when I moved over to UCLA, um literally one of the best. So when it came to studying cemeteries and cemetery archives, it's been there's nothing better between if UCLA doesn't have it, then the interlibrary alone will have it. Um, but as far as within the death archive space, so as part of my program, I had to do a cemetery internship, or I should say I had to do an internship, not necessarily at a cemetery, but that's where I ended up. And it really put me behind the scenes of how some archives programs work and particularly death archives. And so continuing on, I moved to Los Angeles after I graduated because my partner wanted to work in the entertainment industry industry business, all of that stuff. Um, and ECLA was hiring in the women's center. And so honestly, it's just been continuing to learn and grow in these areas. I get to audit classes on community archives. They have some of the top faculty and thought people in this area. And so it's just been a really welcoming space for continuing to learn about these things.

Crista Cowan: 7:56

I love that. You mentioned your internship, and that I think it's how you got into cemeteries. Tell me a little bit about how that all went down.

Rosie Grant: 8:06

Well, it was not exactly what I would have expected going into the library science program. I thought I would be probably interning at a library somewhere, and it was during the pandemic, it was 2021. And so in Washington, DC, quite a lot of the spaces and internships in person had temporarily stopped because there was just so much chaos happening. Um, unfortunately, cemeteries were busier than ever. And so they had opened up this um archives internship for the sake of digitizing a lot of their markers and creating this sort of online tour of some of their more famous residents there that they already had in-person tours for. So it was a lot of wandering around looking for these gravestones, using find a grave. Um we have an app. So the cemetery itself has an app that's pretty good and it's up to date. Um, so if you're trying to find someone, it helps for genealogy reasons. We have a cemetery archivist who is this fabulous storyteller named Dale Dooley. And she's just tells one story after another of the folks buried there. And it was a very eye-opening experience because I love cemeteries, but I knew very little about the death industry.

Crista Cowan: 9:18

And so what cemetery was that that you did your internship with?

Rosie Grant: 9:23

It was Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., which is a fabulous. People ever get to go to DC and go on a tour there. Um, they have tons of tours. It's very welcoming to the community. They have an apiary, so you can get cemetery honey there. They have programs, events, a death doula. Um, they have a preservation team, they have a very popular dog walking program. And it is like a cemetery very welcoming to the living to come and be connected to people who are buried there.

Crista Cowan: 9:53

And that's so interesting because I think we've become a society where cemeteries are almost off limits in some cases, but cemeteries used to be very much public spaces.

Rosie Grant: 10:04

It's so true. Yeah, I think I get that comment a lot of like, oh, you shouldn't go, like, unless you're visiting your grandparent, don't go to a cemetery, which I totally understand the like, you know, obviously follow the cemetery rules and those are posted at the front for a reason. Um, and there's ways to respectfully visit cemeteries, but I definitely feel like, yeah, it's it's sad to see of like a disconnect. And I think for the safety of a lot of cemeteries, it's better when the community is connected to them. And the DC area has actually lost several cemeteries that, you know, eventually they stopped having active burials. And so it was very expensive to do upkeep. And then the dis the local community became disconnected, and then eventually they turned into a parking lot or a shopping mall. And um, in some cases the people were relocated, in some cases they weren't. And so I think it is a preservation method to bring in the community to care about the space. Um, and yeah, so in any case, when you think about the early cemeteries, the rural cemeteries, the people who would picnic in them and go out for the weekends. And yeah, um, you know, maybe we'll go back to that someday, but it definitely feels like there's a disconnect from how it used to be.

Crista Cowan: 11:15

Yeah, absolutely. I've I've loved cemeteries since I was a kid. Um, I think some of it stems from the fact that my birthday is the day after Halloween. And so, you know, even though I'm not Hispanic, I grew up in Los Angeles, fifth generation Los Angelino, and very much connected to the Mexican culture there. And Day of the Dead is a big deal for them. Um, and so having a birthday that is the first day of Diodoles Muertos is um maybe had something to do with it. But then also we lived near a cemetery, a pretty large one in our community, and the shortcut to get to the school bus was through the cemetery. And so there was never any like fear or um, you know, it wasn't about being spooky or scaring each other. It was just this really peaceful place. And I think probably my connection to family history played a role in that as well. But when you kind of triangulate all of those things, cemeteries have always been just a really lovely place for me. And I love visiting and I still picnic there, you know, and put flowers on graves and sometimes just wander through the cemetery and read tombstones. And every time I go to a new place, as a matter of fact, I was just in uh where was I? Just a few weeks ago. I was um uh on a business trip and we had some time before our flight. And so we looked up the local cemetery and we pulled up find a grave and thought, who needs photos of what and how can we help? And and and I love that. Like I love that that I've always felt that connection. So I love hearing when people get just as excited or just as passionate about cemeteries as I do.

Rosie Grant: 12:52

That is the most iconic way to wait for a flight I've ever heard, volunteering to do some find a grave research for folks. I love that so, so much. And I love that you also get to go even from like a young age, traveling to your bus. My high school was similar. I would cut through the local cemetery because my my house was on one side and the high school was on the other side of the cemetery. So I would walk through it. And it was really, it wasn't like it was just beautiful. It was a very place. And it makes, as a younger person, it made it a little easier of just physically being there, made it less scary than if you never go there other than for funerals. It becomes so taboo or you know, a heavier place. Um, and yeah, there's no place that celebrates like food and death together like Los Angeles. I feel like their deodelaus Marchist events are absolutely amazing.

Crista Cowan: 13:44

So you've had this interest in cemeteries, it sounds like maybe your whole life as well, not just because of this university project that you engaged in. But when did your interest turn to the recipes?

Rosie Grant: 13:57

The internship happened in 2021. And yeah, it was definitely a lifelong interest in cemeteries, even if I wasn't really aware of how the behind the scenes work. Um, I should also say my parents are both ghost tour guides to that desktop in the family. Um, so I definitely had grown up going to a lot of them, but even despite that, so I'd been to quite a lot of cemeteries by the time 2021 rolled around, but I had never seen a gravestone recipe. And even working in the cemetery, I was so unfamiliar about the, you know, huge variety of memorials and gravestone types there were out there. You know, anything from the classic zinc-based gravestone to really funny quotes, to photos, to um, you know, unusual statues, like anything that was important to a person you can see on their gravestone. So I was just in general, like very, it was very eye-opening to see that. And I had started a TikTok account as part of the library science program. And we basically, it was in a class, we had to post about a niche topic. And so my professor was like, you should make it about your cemetery internship. And I was like, is there an audience for that? And there definitely is.

Crista Cowan: 15:10

Right.

Rosie Grant: 15:10

You know, lots of TAFO files online, particularly like, yeah, social media is a huge area for cemetery folks who love preservation work or love history, um, or even just the art of a cemetery. And so I had been featuring first just my own cemetery of, you know, some of the more unusual memorials. And then I moved on to Washington, D.C. in general, then Maryland and Virginia. And then it was just really any interesting gravestone that I learned about, I would talk about just because I found it so cool and interesting that people decided to do this. And it was about October 2021-ish that I learned about the grave of a woman named Naomi who has a spritz cookie recipe on her gravestone. And I learned about it from a blog post called Atlas Obscura. They have a really lovely, they have lots of good cemetery stories that are really well researched. And it was just, I thought it was the coolest thing. It looks like an open cookbook. And you walk up to it and like it's a pedestal, it looks like an open stone book on a pedestal, and her ingredients are written out on it. And I just thought, I wonder what that tastes like. So I cooked it and I put it on TikTok, and um it went super viral overnight in a very, I found a surprising way, um, just because so many people were really engaging with food and death on a personal level. Um, there were lots of people who were like, oh wow, like what would I put on my gravestone if I had a recipe? Um, but then a lot of people were saying things like, you know, my mom died two years ago. Uh, I still make her cake for both of our birthdays. And it helps me feel like she's still with me. Or, you know, my dad died a few years ago. I make his chili every weekend and things like that of like just these really personalized food and death stories. And so while I was learning more about Naomi, I learned there were a few other people who had done this who had been featured different places of the internet, some in local news, some in blogs, one on Reddit, one on Twitter. And it was just like basically, I was like, I wonder what all of these recipes taste like. And so I just started basically documenting them and clicking the recipes. And that's kind of how the project got started.

Crista Cowan: 17:21

Because if it's important enough to engrave on your tombstone, you you would hope it's good.

Rosie Grant: 17:25

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Crista Cowan: 17:31

And I love that. I love that this whole convergence of like the pandemic leading you to this path and this opportunity to make this, you know, make these things that you're finding, and then the rise of TikTok that just took off during COVID, obviously, and got that attention. Um, did you feel like kind of forced into this in any way? Or have you joyfully headed down this path of tombstone recipes?

Rosie Grant: 18:00

Oh, joyfully, but also surprisingly so. I think with every recipe, I've been like, wow, three, that's crazy. And then four, what? That's insane. Now I'm at 50 and I keep being like, there's 50 of them. So it's something I couldn't have like planned for because it was, I mean, I should say all of them have been crowdsourced. They've all been either if they weren't featured online, then someone had sent them to me. Or when I was at about eight recipes, um, the family started reaching out from different folks around the country. And they were like, oh my gosh, I thought my mom was the only one who decided to do this recipe. Or, you know, my mother-in-law had this carrot cake recipe. And so that's been really cool. Of like, you know, both with families and with like just different folks online who were visiting cemeteries. Um, so I I mean, for me, I'm I can't, I feel like I'm like, did I, how did I manifest this? Because I could never have planned for something like this, but I've always loved cemeteries, I've always loved sort of these like death positive spaces. But I've also like I was a creative writing minor and English major in college, and I did I studied food writing and food memoirs, and food memoirs are one of my favorite styles of books. And so I'm like, for these two things, I would never have imagined to, you know, converge. And so I'm just like, how did this happen? But I'm not mad about it.

Crista Cowan: 19:26

And it's so interesting because it sounds like you started like reflecting back out to the world, this discovery that you were making. But in some ways, because of the rise in popularity of both your TikTok account and now with the cookbook, like you now maybe are influencing culture. Maybe there are people who are going to make this choice to put a recipe on their gravestone that never would have felt the permission to do that before.

Rosie Grant: 19:50

Yeah. So that has started happening and it's become a little bit of a chicken and the egg thing. And one of the questions, so I started, um I Think when I was around 20 recipes was when I first met Naomi's family and we cooked together. And I think that was very informative for me of how to kind of more formalize the process. Cause I think I'd been randomly just been like, oh wow, this is cool. Oh, this is how cool, how cool. And then I was like, okay, now I need to like really do a more formalized documentation, uh, reach out to because most of the ones in the beginning were families either featured already online or you know, their person was already online. But as new ones were coming in, and if it didn't come from the family, I needed to, of course, chat with them and get permission to include their person in the project. And then with that would usually come a uh oral history interview about their loved one. And so we would kind of, you know, have a phone call or a series of phone calls or Zoom calls. I would try to meet wherever they were at. And it just kind of kept growing from there. And I, yeah, I'm like, it was at every stage of it of the way, I was like, wow, this is so cool that this is we're at this stage of like, you know, a hundred interviews of different people from around the world and you know, the transcriptions, and this is more like the archiving side of this project. The tempting out of it. Um, but yeah, no, it was really it's been it's been so cool to kind of just see the like organic flow of it, um, because it definitely didn't start out that way.

Crista Cowan: 21:21

Yeah, nobody, nobody plans, I think, for this kind of a career, right?

Rosie Grant: 21:25

100%.

Crista Cowan: 21:27

So was Naomi's family the first family that you connected with?

Rosie Grant: 21:32

Yeah, they were the first and on a couple of levels. So it was the first recipe I learned about, the first gravestone that I visited. Um, I was driving to New York with my mom pretty early on. I think it was still in the first year of the project. And I was like, oh, well, you know, I know about Naomi. I should visit her while we're in Brooklyn. And so I was thinking about what flowers to bring to her grave. And I didn't know what her favorite flower was. So I was like, well, you know, her cookies um feel very like this was obviously special to her. So I made her cookies and we enjoyed her cookies while visiting her. And then there's another woman named Connie who's buried just a little north of New York City. So I was like, well, if we're visiting Naomi, we should visit Connie. So we did the same thing. Um, so again, very organically of just like, well, just why not? And then eventually just turned into the thing of like, well, it felt really nice. And this was the place that was important to them. And I'm reading about them and I'm reading their obituaries, and then yes, I'm starting to meet with the family. So with Naomi's family, I got in contact with her son Richard, and they very kindly were down to meet at her grave um in Brooklyn, and I met with uh her son and then her granddaughter, and we cooked together and they told all of these stories, and that really changed. I mean, the recipe is great, I think all of them, and there's definitely like a cool, like, whoa, this came from a gravestone. Um, but more than anything, the stories of the person was like the real, that was like the good stuff where I was like, Oh, these people were so cool, and they each have very different stories. And so that was really important while reaching out to all the people of like who was the person behind this recipe. Uh and that probably took that took the most time to because some of the folks I would reach out to were just a little bit like, who? Right. And but yeah, so in any case, when it came to the interviews, um, and this was going back to your earlier question of like the chicken and the egg thing, of some of the later families that I was interviewing were saying things like, Oh, well, I I learned about this thing on TikTok. I just basically learned about other people who decided to do this, and so I too decided to do it. So they were basically everyone's inspired all of the other folks who have each done it, which has been really lovely of like food inspiring other people in their food.

Crista Cowan: 23:50

Yeah.

Rosie Grant: 23:51

Wow, I love that.

Crista Cowan: 23:52

So at what point did you decide I'm gonna put this in it into a cookbook?

Rosie Grant: 23:58

Into a cookbook. Oh, so crazy seeing like a physical book being like I love it. I think for me, I um I mean it when we were at about maybe 10-ish recipes. Some editors started reaching out and they were like, hey, like uh, what are your thoughts on a cookbook? And I was like, I mean, I I don't know if there's more than 10. Is 10 enough for a cookbook? And they're like, no, let us know when you get to a hundred recipes. Oh I can't imagine that'll ever happen. But I connected with my current editor, Jacqueline at Herper Collins, and she I think understood the the spirit of the project a little bit more. And she was like, no, this won't be a traditional cookbook. This could be, of course, like the it's the it's a community archive of people, and these recipes represent all of these folks from all over the place. And so it would be, of course, the recipe. And there's this funny thing. So you know how like the the story before a lot of recipes that we'll see in blobs, um, it's called the head note, uh, which is very funny because I'm pulling from headstones. So it's like headnotes as like this sort of like, what's the story before the recipe? And for these ones, they're all from this gravestone. And so she she kind of understood that, like, in order to do this correctly, we needed to feature the people and of course get all the families um, you know, permissions and make sure everyone feels good about it and can review the drafts, get photos of the people. And then I needed to physically, in my mind, it was important to visit and document them as I went along. And so, anyways, so that yeah, it was when we were at 20 recipes, that's where we started, and we were like, well, if we can get to 40, then that'll be like a unusual bite-sized cookbook.

Crista Cowan: 25:41

Yeah. Well, I have leafed through it and it is beautiful. Oh, and then I have I have read some parts of it and I am just so impressed. So, what I want to talk about actually is your dedication. You dedicated this to both of your grandmothers, which I think, again, as a genealogist and somebody for whom family connections are so important. I love that you did that. Tell me about them.

Rosie Grant: 26:07

Oh man, my grandmas were the best. I feel like, I mean, grandmas are awesome. I, you know, whatever. Grandmas are all people too, but I very much lucked out in the grandma department. I'm named after my grandmother, also named Rosemary Grant, and she um paid for my college. So she was very encouraging of me being an English major, which I know there's a lot of jokes these days of like, oh gosh, my kid wants to be an English major. Um, but she loved being an English major. She was an English and biology major at a time where a lot of folks from her generation weren't at the women were not getting college degrees. And she put herself through college. Um, and so intelligent, just a very sharp person. Um, definitely a more formal cook, like she loved Julia Child. She would really, you know, she would for us at the time in Virginia, like the fact that she would make like a paella or something, everyone was like, whoa. Um, and then on the flip side is my grandmother McCarthy, who I actually lived with in college, um, just because she uh my grandfather had passed away, and uh, she had a big house in Vienna, Virginia. And me and my cousins, we all grown up together. So we all lived in different rooms of the house with her, which was so fun. It was just a really, really lovely time. And I got so much time with her. And food was very important in her life, even though she wasn't really a fancy cook, she was very like, you know, like uh post-World War II, like uh meat and potatoes, like really simple eggs and toast coffee, breakfast, but she loved mealtime for like chatting with people and she loved going out to lunch with folks and having big dinners, and she hosted all the holidays. And so I think between the two of them, food and like connection and gathering was extremely important on both sides of my family. And I mean, yeah, I was thinking about them throughout the project. They both passed away right at the start of the project. Um, and you know, they both lived very long lives, which was wonderful. But I was thinking a lot about their food at their funerals. And so then here I was interviewing families about their loved ones, and they were talking about using that food to remember them goodbye and bring them back and bring their memories closer. And I was like, oh wow, like I feel that too. And I miss um, but whenever I eat like my grandma's yellow birthday cake that she would make for all of my birthdays, I feel like she's with me again. Um, so yeah, this was very much in the spirit of those two. I love that. Oh, and I love grandma's.

Crista Cowan: 28:42

Right. I think about my own grandmothers, and neither of them were great cooks, but no, but but my my mom's mom used to make fresh lemonade and every time we would come to visit, she would have fresh lemonade for us. And I recently inherited the lemonade pitcher um that she used to serve it in, and it's not very big, but I keep my sourdough starter in it.

Rosie Grant: 29:08

Okay, amazing. That's awesome.

Crista Cowan: 29:11

Um, and then my other grandmother made these incredible spice cookies. They were like better than ginger snaps, like so good. And she would bake them ahead of time because she never knew when we would show up, and she would stick them in the freezer. And so she, so we always had not fresh out of the oven cookies, but frozen spice cookies, and they were so good. And so I just think like that that concept of food and connection. Like we walked in the door and one grandma's pulling out the lemonade and the other one's pulling out the cookies, like that was connection for them. And now it's memory for me. Yeah, and and I love that food has that power.

Rosie Grant: 29:51

Oh, that's so beautiful. I love that you got her jar and it's being used to cultivate something just as good. Like, yeah, so cool. Yeah. We love and I love, do you still have that the ginger cookie recipe?

Crista Cowan: 30:05

Not only do we have it, we laminated it on a block of wood with my grandma's picture and decorated it all Christmassy. And it is one of our Christmas decorations. Like we put it out at Christmas as part of our decoration.

Rosie Grant: 30:19

See it like there with you all. I love that.

Crista Cowan: 30:22

That's awesome. Yeah. Well, let's talk a little bit about Christmas. So we're recording this episode right before um Halloween, which is appropriate for our conversation. But it's gonna air the week before Christmas. And in the cookbook, there is just this really lovely recipe that comes from the state of Iowa. So here on the podcast, we're doing this countdown to America 250. And when we were trying to figure out what represented Iowa, we actually came across your story about Maxine. And so I would love you to tell us all a little bit about Maxine.

Rosie Grant: 30:59

Oh my gosh. Yeah, well, so she was one of the first like OG gravestorm recipe people. And in fact, as I've been interviewing other people, they were inspired. They saw a photo of Maxine. Maxine, her Christmas grave uh went viral on the internet way before I came along. Um, and which is really funny because it is kind of like Cascade Falls, Iowa, is like pretty far away. It's like hours outside of Chicago and um beautiful town. And Maxine had grown up on a farm and a couple of kids, her and her husband were very interested in just giving back to their community. Um, she had a best friend named Odie, and the two would go shopping together. They would talk pretty much every single day, whether in person or on the phone. Their kids all grew up together. And when both of them passed away, they're both buried in the same cemetery. And when um when I went to go visit, I was gonna go meet with her daughter to visit uh Maxine's grave. They had another death in the family, so I wasn't able to meet with them. But I went to a local store just to pick up a Christmas plate to bring Maxine's cookies. I'd made her Christmas cookies and I was gonna bring them to her grave site. And the woman at the store who I chatted with was Odie's daughter. So the woman, Maxine's best friend, her daughter, worked at this store. And she was like, We love Maxine's cookies. We make them every year still. My kids love them, the whole family makes it. And the tradition in the family had been they would make them on Christmas Eve and hang them on the tree. And so you would wake up Christmas morning and you have these cookies hanging there. And in my own family, I have some nieces and nephews. We've done that since learning about this tradition. And my the kids in the family love this because they come to our house and there are all these cookies hanging on the tree.

Crista Cowan: 32:46

My producer did make Maxine's cookies, and so I'm so excited. I haven't tried them yet. I'm so excited to try one. That's awesome.

Rosie Grant: 32:58

Oh, they're so pretty.

Crista Cowan: 33:00

Oh my gosh, they're delicious too. Um, this is oh, I know. Look at her. She made like Christmas trees and stars. That's so nice. We leave we leave cookies out for Santa, but I've never heard of putting cookies on a tree. So I looked into it a little bit. Like that's a German tradition. Right. And that area of Iowa was settled by a lot of German families. And so it makes sense that that would be something that they would do, but it was something I was not familiar with.

Rosie Grant: 33:28

Her it was something that she had adopted from her family. So it was just something that passed along. And I just think it's such a cool, it's such a cool tradition. Why does Santa get all the cookies? Right.

Crista Cowan: 33:41

And I love that you've kind of carried that into your family as you've learned about that. I think that's beautiful. Maxine, I understand, like really gave back to her community as well.

Rosie Grant: 33:52

Yeah. So she donated, her and her husband had a lot of land that they, because they had, you know, the farming land, and they eventually donated it to this youth program. Um and actually it's very, and there's another gravestone recipe not too far away from a woman named Winnie who actually volunteered at this same youth center. And so all of this land was donated basically to help kids. And it was just freely donated. I think it was part of like a some sort of raffle system just to raise money for this program.

Crista Cowan: 34:26

That's amazing. Wow. Um, and it's so interesting, like these little coincidences. I think sometimes we think about in some of these more rural places that people are so spread out and maybe not as connected. But I think that the importance of community in places like Iowa is particularly felt by those people. And so how lovely that Maxine and her husband did that.

Rosie Grant: 34:48

Yeah, yeah. No, they seemed really special, just like very, very loving, very giving people. And yeah, so she, I mean, just seemed like such a generous person and wanted others to have this recipe. So it was important to put this onto her gravestone. So, like, you know, if you're passing by, you can get this really good cookie recipe. And I, yeah, there's so many like different like things and traditions that come out of all the different gravestones, but this is probably one of my favorites.

Crista Cowan: 35:17

Do you have other holiday traditions?

Rosie Grant: 35:20

In my own family, I mean, yes, Halloween is a big one for us personally. In the past, my uncle, who's a librarian, would host a big family Halloween party, and he would make uh mixtapes for everyone. This is like back in the 90s. We'd all get a Halloween mixtape. So we would get that in early October and get to listen year-round. Um, but it would be really like building up excitement. Picking up pumpkins and carving them was always a really big thing. And then I would say for Christmas and Thanksgiving, family was really big on doing like big gatherings and meals. We'd all meet up both of the grandparents' houses. Both of my grandmothers lived not too far away from each other in Virginia. So we'd usually go to one for lunch and then dinner for the other. And yeah, I love any sort of like gathering with family and loved ones around food. Like they're the best. Yeah. Right.

Crista Cowan: 36:13

Um, was that trip to visit Maxine? Was that the first time you had been to Iowa?

Rosie Grant: 36:18

It was the second. So the first time we went to Iowa was to visit another gravestone writ. I get to go to all of my states now, mostly for their cemeteries. I love that. Yeah. So there's a woman in the book who also in Iowa in Dow City named Deb Nelson, who was a local radio DJ host. And her gravestone has a cheese chip recipe on it, which is phenomenal. Um, hers was the really lovely case of her daughter who had actually reached out to me once the project had gotten going, and she was like, Oh my gosh, I thought my mom was the only one crazy enough to do this. So basically, when um when Deb died, there'd been this like phrase in their family that she would joke about. She would give out this cheese dip every Christmas and they would package it in a jar, and people would, you know, get to take their jars home with a sleeve of crackers, and then they'd have to return their jars to her so that they would get more of the cheese dip the following year. It was just like a fun family tradition that people would look forward to. Everyone said her cheese dip recipe was like the best, and they would always ask for it, and she would always say, like, yeah, you can have it over my grave, or something like that. So when she passed away, her family was like, I guess we have to put her recipe. This is what she said. And so her own friend, who was just like someone else in the community, is the local um gravestone carver. So she was the one who designed it. She worked for the family to pick the shape and you know, design the lettering and just get everything right for them. Um, and she said it's the first time that she had ever carved her gravestone recipe, which is really, really, really cool. So I went with and I met with Kate, her daughter, and we did a little tour around town. And literally everyone, the book starts with her section of being like, everyone has a Deb Nelson story, because we would go like five feet, and like another person would be like, I have a Deb Nelson story too. Like she was so beloved in her community.

Crista Cowan: 38:12

So in your book, you have some tips for people. Um obviously, we want people to buy the book and read it, but do you have just one or two that you could share with us?

Rosie Grant: 38:22

Yeah, absolutely. So um, again, this was very much inspired from community archives and um hearing of people who were like, oh my gosh, I, you know, I've I lost someone and I never got to get this information. So encouraging, I have 21 tips and questions to ask to document your own family food history. Um, I even have the book open right now. The first one, do we have any recipes that have been passed down through the generations? And the second one is where did our family or community come from and how has this influenced our food traditions? Um in my own family, you know, we were from Ireland, both sides of my family are from Ireland at different times. And so we we've even done we've done the Irish Wake with, you know, hanging and drinking and eating food with the person there with us. And I mean, obviously, we love our meat and potatoes. I feel like that's lasted. We love an Irish pub, we love Irish coffee. Um, and these were just traditions that we picked up from our grandparents.

Crista Cowan: 39:21

I love that. Um, my grandmother is very Irish and Scottish and German. That is her ethnic background. But I mentioned she grew up in Los Angeles and she grew up in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood. And so when she started raising her own family, it was tacos for Sunday dinner. And that has continued. So my she raised her kids that way every Sunday, Cowan Taco Sunday. And it was one of those things where like everybody knew the cowans were having tacos on Sunday, and so people would come for tacos and she would pan fry her own tortillas, and um like we season our meat with like authentic cumin and like it's this whole thing. My dad and uncle decided to continue that with their children. So we were raised with Cowan Taco Sunday. And now my brothers and some of my cousins, like we like we know on Sundays, wherever we are in the country and we're kind of spread out now, that Cowans are having tacos every Sunday.

Rosie Grant: 40:17

I'm so obsessed with that. That's like that is that's like Chef's Kiss. That's so beautiful. And I love so much. And it is cool. It's cool to think about how it's just asking questions of like, you know, for the next generation, where they're like, you know, oh, of course we do tacos Sundays, but of like, why do we do this? And where did this come from? And why do we bring in cumin and you know, these certain ingredients and how we we fry the the tacos and how the meat gets, you know, whatever the thing is. Oh, it's really cool to see of like, well, we got it from here.

Crista Cowan: 40:49

Yeah. So even the way that like some of those food traditions don't just continue for generations, but evolve in some ways as well.

Rosie Grant: 40:56

Oh, I love that so much. Yeah, it's so food is so fun. Like, yeah, if you guys ever do an open house Sunday taco dinner, let me know. Okay.

Crista Cowan: 41:05

If you are in Utah over a weekend, you are you are invited.

Rosie Grant: 41:08

Thank you.

Crista Cowan: 41:10

I love this whole idea. I love the idea of food and death and the connection that those two things have. I love the concept of food and connection. Um, you know, gathering around the dinner table is such a thing that my parents felt was so important and my grandparents were felt was so important and it's so refreshing to see my brothers continue that with their children. And so that connection point with food, but then the memory that comes with food and flavors is so important as well. And so I just think it's so beautiful that you've taken this project on and that it's not just the recipes that you're sharing, but it that it's the stories of the people as well.

Rosie Grant: 41:54

Yeah, and thank you so much. And I'm so glad to hear your family and your siblings and like just everyone is getting to like food is just everything. And I remember being in a food writing class in college, and my professor was like, Yeah, food is everything, it connects to everything. And I'm like, well, it's not everything, right? Like it's not death. Um, but yeah, like I feel like the connections about it has been the most rewarding part. Like, you know, we all have our recipes, we all have our gatherings, and it just to me, like I'm like, oh, this is like the meaning of life. It's just being able to do this as much as we can.

Crista Cowan: 42:28

Yeah. Well, in the book, I'm gonna read this so that I get it right. You say, document your history, make time for it, write it down, record it, leave them something more than an empty plate. Have you started that process for yourself?

Rosie Grant: 42:43

Definitely so. I would say that like um one of the like sadder comments and messages that I get is people saying things like, Oh, I like my mom died and I never got her recipe because like it was awkward to ask for it, or I just you know, thought I had more time and now that's lost and I haven't been able to recreate it. And um, I mean, I've gotten so many messages like that over the years of people being like, oh my gosh, I like, or my family didn't really use recipes, but my mom would make this thing by memory, and I wish I had recorded it, documented it, something like that. So I think in my own family, um, like my dad makes a really good jambalaya. So I've started recording him doing that more often. I made a family cookbook, um, which was an excuse for my cousin's wedding, but it was also a way to document our recipes and share them amongst everyone. Um, my great-grandmother, who had moved from Ireland, she had an Irish soda bread recipe and a gingerbread recipe. So I was able to get copies of it and transcribed it and so sent that out to everyone. So it's not only documenting it, but making sure everyone has access.

Crista Cowan: 43:53

Yeah.

Rosie Grant: 43:54

So yeah, a big part of the project was like, you know, you can start level zero can just be like ask a few questions and record it. You know, level two might be like, you know, videotaping you doing a cooking session and write down the recipe and then of course sharing that around. Um, because if we don't do it, then it's it's easy for these things to get lost.

Crista Cowan: 44:14

Yeah, well said so much. Well, before I ask you the final question, um, how can people find you, follow you, buy your cookbook?

Rosie Grant: 44:24

Um, thank you so much. Again, I'm still like, oh my gosh, this is a good book. Um one day we'll stop feeling excited, like this rash feeling. Um, they can follow me on TikTok and Instagram at GhostlyArchive. Um, I have a ghostlyarchive.com website if folks are interested. Um but really social media is the main area. And then of course, if you just Google to die for a cookbook of gravestone recipes, um, HarperCollins and really all major booksellers will have it. Um, if people come across cemeteries, food or not food that they think are interesting, I love getting messages like that from folks.

Crista Cowan: 45:01

I love that. Well, my final question for you you've done all this work, you've kind of made it your life's work, it sounds like. Have you considered whether or not you want a recipe on your gravestone?

Rosie Grant: 45:12

I have. I feel like I have to at this point. Um, so I'm currently working with Congressional Cemetery where I did my internship to buy a plot there. Well, I don't know what the stone will look like yet, because um kudos to the folks who have figured out how to um format it. Like, you know, a gravestone only has so much space um to fit a full recipe. So I want to do, I think for me right now, I want to do a clam linguini or clam pasta. Um, I love clam-based dishes. I'm very nostalgic to those. My partner's from Maine, and so I love any like seafood y type dishes. And as we've been creating sort of our own um community in Los Angeles, neither of us are like born and raised here. And so having these like regular dinners with folks, I love making this dish. And it's just very delicious with white wine and butter and clams, of course. So that's currently what I have picked.

Crista Cowan: 46:10

Well, there you go. Well, I just uh my parents and siblings and I just bought um cemetery plots actually this last week. Congratulations. You know, that's awesome. Um, but now that I have read through your book and had this conversation with you, I'm gonna have to maybe spend a minute thinking about which recipe I would put on my tombstone. I love that so much and congratulations.

Rosie Grant: 46:33

That's very exciting.

Crista Cowan: 46:34

It is kind of one of those things we need to just be more comfortable talking about.

Rosie Grant: 46:39

Yep, exactly. And it gets hopefully a little easier every time.

Crista Cowan: 46:44

Yeah, it does. Rosie, thank you so much. Thank you for the work that you do. I think it's so valuable, so important to put it out into the world. And of course, thank you for coming on the podcast. And I loved getting to know you better.

Rosie Grant: 46:55

Same here. What an honor. Thank you so much. Studio sponsored by Ancestry.