She makes food to die for.
Rosie Grant loves trying out new recipes, but with a twist — they all come from a gravestone.
The digital librarian, who lives in Washington D.C, began cooking recipes she found on headstones after wandering around cemeteries during the pandemic.
“You can walk in nature, learn a little bit of history about different local cemeteries and people buried there,” Grant told NPR in January. “And then, yeah, like, posting about actually, like, cooking through these different recipes has been a lot of fun.”
Grant has even flown to different states in search of some new recipes from beyond the grave, filming them and posting her adventures to TikTok under the username @ghostlyarchive where she regularly amasses millions of views.
Her account initially started as a project while she was a graduate student at the University of Maryland and taking a class that involved her creating a social media account. She also held an internship in the archives of the Congressional Cemetery, which required her to graveyards often.
She then began posting facts and tours about the cemeteries in the area. When she started expanding to include the recipes on gravestones in January last year, she saw her account go viral.
Grant says she has several recipes that she loves, but her favorite is the first one she made: a simple spritz cookie.
“It’s the gravestone of Naomi Miller-Dawson in Brooklyn, N.Y,” Grant shared with Scott Simon on NPR. “Her final, I guess, gift to her family was leaving the family recipe that she had never shared in life.”
“The recipe is such a nice addition to a tombstone. It reminds you this person had a mind, hands, they created things the same way we do. Rip,” one user gushed.
“There’s something so beautiful about the dead leaving behind the recipes that nourished them in life,” agreed another. “I think their spirits must be so happy.”
