No, I am not ill or thinking about death as anything but a distant eventuality-- but I just saw this blog post that made me think about my future tombstone.
Grandma Ida's nut cookie recipe is right on the side of her tombstone, preserved for posterity. Perhaps the recipe will even ensure that her grave will get visitors long into the future.
When Adele died, (Adele was my aunt's dear friend from high school who married a distant-ish cousin of ours) my cousin Bonnie arrived at Adele's memorial service with copies of Adele's honey cake recipe to hand out to the attendees. I thought that Bonnie's idea was brilliant.
This is something that I decided that I want to have take place at my funeral --whenever it takes place. But having a recipe on the tombstone takes that impulse to a whole new level.
So if you attend my funeral, what recipe of mine do you want to be given? What recipe would you want to see on my tombstone?
I come from people who pre-plan their funerals. My grandparents and my great aunt and uncle once exchanged gifts, Uncle Nathan and Aunt Dina bought cemetery plots for my grandparents. My grandparents returned the favor by purchasing a tombstone. My mother acquired a set of shrouds in the mid-1960s and stored them until her death in 2015 (The shrouds were packed in a paper bag that said "Thank you! come again!"). My father received his set of shrouds ( as a birthday gift from my mother--don't ask!) in the 1970s. My parents bought their cemetery plots when I was in college and their tombstone has been up since not long after that purchase.
Given that I come from people that like to plan ahead---give me some recipe suggestions for me to mull over.
Oy, perhaps your spice rub for your Sabbath chicken. Or challah with flavoring choices...I think my mother's would have been her chocolate chip cookies. I shant have to think of mine, as I have no wish to be buried. My children are making a list of the places that they will scatter my ashes, and what they will say at each one
ReplyDeleteMy parents always cooked chicken the same way, roasted whole with Lawry Salt. I think that I am less drawn to consistency than my parents were.
ReplyDeleteI am fortunate to have kids who love flavor. We have pushed one another as cooks. I cherish our times in the kitchen often with the kids at the table doing homework and asking them to taste and offer suggestions or their asking me as they cooked. I love the times that we collaborated on flavor combinations until a taste yielded an "oooh! That's it! "