The Good Funeral Guide

The Natural Death Handbook, Fifth Edition

A thoroughly updated and revised edition of the Natural Death Centre‘s celebrated handbook. Now presented alongside a new collection of essays on death, dying and funeral practices by doctors, historians, authors, poets, theologians and artists including Richard Barnett, David Jay Brown, Dr Sheila Cassidy, Charles Cowling, Bill Drummond, Stephen Grasso, Maggi Hambling, Graham Harvey, Gary Lachman, Nick Reynolds, and Dignity in Dying.

It’s out in May 2012!

This is from the New York Times:

SPECIAL occasions of every sort feature food and funerals are no exception. In many cultures, there are foods that are customarily served after a funeral.

The funeral cakes that were traditional in some denominations in this country, mostly Protestant, were often meant not only to provide refreshment for mourners, but also to be a token of remembrance. A pair of these cookie-like cakes, sometimes called seedcakes in old cookbooks, might be wrapped in black crepe paper or paper printed with such symbols as skulls, and given to mourners to take home as keepsakes.

In his book, ”Traditional Food in Yorkshire” (John Donald, 1987), Peter Brears, a professor at the University of Leeds in England, documented one instance when funeral cakes tied with black crepe were delivered to homes in the village as invitations to the funeral.

In the United States the custom of serving special funeral cakes has all but disappeared. But appropriately a selection of funeral cakes was offered to guests at the opening reception last week for an exhibition of gravestone carvings at Federal Hall in lower Manhattan, presented by the Museum of American Folk Art. William Woys Weaver, the food historian who researched and adapted the recipes for the reception, said: ”Funeral cakes came here from Europe. They were common in northern Europe, and today the tradition is maintained primarily in rural areas of Sweden.”

Leslie Macchiarella has a recipe for funeral cake (pictured above), which she also calls Good Luck Peach Cake. The peaches carry ancient Chinese associations of happiness, luck and immortality.

Find it here. Well yummy. 

Posted by Charles

A great recipe here for all bereaved people wondering what to serve at the do afterwards.

Undertakers, celebrants and other funeral industry professionals might like to serve this (with a dark chuckle) at supper parties. 

Funeral potatoes

Serves 8 to 10

You’ll need one 30-ounce bag of frozen shredded (not cubed) hash brown potatoes.

3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 onions, chopped fine
¼ cup all-purpose flour
1½ cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 cup half-and-half
1¾ teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon dried thyme
¼ teaspoon pepper
2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
8 cups frozen shredded hash brown potatoes
½ cup sour cream
4 cups sour-cream-and-onion potato chips, crushed

1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Melt butter in Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Cook onion until softened, about 5 minutes. Add flour and cook, stirring constantly, until golden, about 1 minute. Slowly whisk in broth, half-and-half, salt, thyme, and pepper and bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, stirring occasionally, until slightly thickened, 3 to 5 minutes. Off heat, whisk in cheddar until smooth.

2. Stir potatoes into sauce, cover, and cook, stirring occasionally, over low heat until thawed, about 10 minutes. Off heat, stir in sour cream until combined.

3. Scrape mixture into 13 by 9-inch baking dish and top with potato chips. Bake until golden brown, 45 to 50 minutes. Let cool 10 minutes. Serve.

To make ahead: Potato mixture can be refrigerated in baking dish, covered with aluminum foil, for 2 days. To finish, bake potatoes 20 minutes. Remove dish from oven and uncover. Top with potato chips and bake until golden brown, 45 to 50 minutes.

Found at this great website: http://www.americastestkitchenfeed.com/recipes/funeral-potatoes/

Gingerbread skeletons baked by JeanFrancis

Posted by Sweetpea

I love reading Nigella Lawson’s cookery books just as much as I love cooking and eating the food she understands and describes so well.  There is a particularly wonderful section called ‘Funeral Feast’ in her 2004 book ‘Feast’, published by Chatto & Windus.  Please find a copy and read it in full.  Here is a little section to whet your appetite:

It may seem odd to talk about what you eat at a funeral as a way of celebrating life, but at every level, that is exactly what it is.  Nor do I mean a celebration in that cheery, if faintly maudlin sense of giving someone a good send-off, though that is a part of it.  Any food is a vital reminder that life goes on, that living is important.  That isn’t brutal: it’s the greatest respect you can pay to the dead.

I am not someone who believes that life is sacred, but I know that it is very precious.  To turn away from that, to act as if living is immaterial, that what you need to sustain life doesn’t count, is to repudiate and diminish the tragedy of the loss of a life…..

…. the abundance of the feast showed the value of the deceased; it was a mark of respect, a way of honouring the life of that person.  Particular foods, too, can be a living testament to the person it was who died.  Recipes live on, and to eat foods that person either used to prepare or liked to eat can feel monumentally significant.  In Thailand, I read in an article by Bee Wilson in the Sunday Telegraph, “mourners are often presented with a little cookbook … compromising the favourite recipes of the dead person.  In this way the whole gastronomic person of the deceased is remembered.”  And I would say that the gastronomic personality is the persona.  How you eat and what you eat it who you are.

It happens in England, too.  I know of some sisters who put together a book of their father’s famous (and previously secret) preserving recipes, to be sold in aid of a local hospice, both to remember him but also to give back to an organisation which had cared for him and for them so tenderly.

Nigella lists recipes for ‘Nursery Fish Pie’, ‘Sweet Lamb Tagine’, ‘Lentil Soup’, ‘Meatloaf’, ‘Heavenly Potatoes’, ‘Marble Cake’ and ‘Fruit Tea Loaf’, each with its reasons for inclusion, but it is ‘Hamine Eggs’ which really catches my imagination:

Hamine Eggs (serves 6)

The traditional Jewish food of mourning is a hard-boiled egg, not as a symbol of regeneration, as the egg might suggest for Christians, but more as a symbol of perpetuation.  Life ends, and life begins: life goes on, in fact.  All foods that are round, too, have that significance – that the cycle of life and time continues – and as Martine Chiche-Yana explains in ‘La Table Juivre’, they are described as being “sans bouche”, without mouths to express sorrow and anguish.  I find that appropriate: there is nothing to be said, or nothing that helps.

Hamine eggs are the Sephardic version, traditionally cooked in the dying embers of a fire.  Here, they are cooked slowly on the hob, with onion skins to tint the shells a rich woody brown; and although coffee grounds are often added, I emptied out the leaves of a used teabag instead.  After all, during World War II, women would use cold tea to dye their legs when stockings were not to be found.

Onion skins from about 4 large onions
Tea leaves from 1 used teabag
6 eggs
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Line a saucepan with onion skins, using about half your supply, and then add the tea leaves.  Put in the eggs and cover with the rest of the onion skins (red onion skins will give a deeper, burgundy tinge).  You don’t want any onion, just the papery skin.  Cover well with water, and pour over the oil to help prevent the water evaporating during the long cooking time.

Bring the pan of water to a boil and immediately transfer to a new, smaller burner with a heat diffuser on it and turn the flame to the lowest flame possible.  Leave to cook very slowly for 7 or so hours, then turn off the heat and leave to cool before taking the eggs out of the murky water.  I tend to cook the eggs in the daytime and leave them till the next morning before taking them out of the pan.

Hamine eggs are not exclusively eaten at funerals, though they are a feature of them, and these are beautiful on the outside, meltingly tender within and worth cooking not just in times of grief.

A delightful account here from the funeral in the chapel of King’s College, Cambridge, of Sir Frank Kermode, eminent literary critic and, most important, very nice man, by John Naughton. It was, says Naughton, “elegant, moving, celebratory and only slightly elegaic. I think he would have approved.” Fittingly, “Afterwards, there was a splendid tea in the Senior Combination Room.” How very Cambridge!

“Ursula [Owen] told a lovely story about a trip she and Frank had gone on together — to the Yeats Summer School in Sligo, where he had been invited to lecture. When they settled into their seats on the plane, Frank opened his folder and realised that he’d brought the wrong text. So they checked into their hotel and he then calmly reconstructed the missing lecture, walked out and delivered it.”

But what I enjoyed most was this reflection by Anthony Holden on the nature of friendship, the value of which is enhanced by the fact that it was delivered by one supremely analytical brain and endorsed by another:

“At the end of his eulogy, Tony said something that rang true for all of us. “What I did to earn Frank’s regard”, he said, “I’ll never know”. Me neither. To be granted the friendship of such a great man was a wonderful privilege. So I’ll just count it as one of my blessings and leave it at that.”

Read the entire post here.  More about Sir Frank here, including his thoughts about death: “Death may be, is likely to be, a little too early or a little too late.” And (another) very nice tribute to Sir Frank, again by John Naughton, here.

Here are some extracts from a cheering story in the Newburyport News, Massachusetts which has set me thinking about the nature of identity and community.

My father, Arthur Allen, died at the age of 63 on Aug. 2. My dad was the embodiment of compassion, duty, style and bravery. He was the guy fighting for the rights of the victims; he was the man campaigning for a friend; he was a proud member of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts; he was a humble member of the Byfield Protection Fire Company No. 1; he was an EMT [Emergency Medical Technician], EMT trainer and swim instructor for underprivileged children; he was a promoter for the annual Firemen’s Ball; he was an organ donor; he was the chairman of the Mass. Aeronautics Commission; he was president of his own business, Security Team; and he was the one who enjoyed doing magic tricks for kids. He was always ready to buy you a meal and even quicker to pick up the tab. He was a true friend to many, my greatest supporter and my mom’s best friend. My dad was a great thinker who spoke provoking truths about our lives, towns, country and times.

…

He was a collector of people and a fixer of troubles. I think it was his own painful childhood, being orphaned at 12, that made it possible for him to connect with injured people and drove him to find ways to alleviate their pain. He was living proof that a person could rise above their problems and make a positive difference in this world. He wanted to help others find their way to healing, too.

…

Who could step up and make sense out of this senseless loss. Who would comfort my mother, my sister, his sister, the people? I felt alone, overwhelmed, and in a dark place.

Then a funny thing happened.

Messages started pouring into our home from friends, families, neighbors and acquaintances. Stories of who my father was and how much he meant to so many were shared in person, by phone, by mail, and even through Facebook postings and poems. Food flowed from every nook and cranny. Pictures of holidays, vacations and events were shared. Children were playing in the yard with my father’s dog. Friends and foes united in grief were hugging in the living room. I heard laughter coming from my parents’ kitchen. I heard my mother laugh. Ready or not, the healing had begun. How was this possible?

It was my dad’s extraordinary love of life, the love he shared with others, the love he instilled in me that was coming full circle home. I was not alone; we were not alone. He was right there with us in the words, deeds and memories shared by others. In the end, it was the positive energy my father sent out into the world that led his family through the dark days of his loss. It was his powerful last lesson for us.

Read the entire story here.

If there’s any ordinary person worse off than yourself, you’ll find them in the problem pages of newspapers and magazines. Do you seek comfort in problem pages? A prurient frisson? An incredulous giggle? Much depends probably on the demographic catered for by the publication. The further downmarket you go, the juicier, sexier and more exotically sordid the emotional quagmire. You get none of that on the problem page of the establishment Spectator magazine. The problems which most baffle our upper echelons concern, it seems, delicate matters of etiquette. Problem solver Mary shows her petitioners how to extricate themselves from invidious social situations in ways which would have drawn gasps from old man Machiavelli himself.

When I was convalescing last month, sitting around idly reading magazines and sipping iced water, I experienced a whim and wrote to the Spectator’s Mary about a problem which exercises many funeral hosts and readers of this blog: what to call the ‘do’ afterwards. This is what I (mendaciously) wrote:

Dear Mary,

My  mother  is presently succumbing to old age and an attendant cancer. She is fortified by serene courage and cheered by the arrangements she is making for the party after her funeral; every day brings fresh finishing touches. But what to call it? We observed that you recently acceded without demur to the term ‘wake’. Inasmuch as this applies to a vigil held over a body before a funeral, we have rejected it, along with everything else we can think of including, of course, the intolerable ‘reception’ and the unbearable ‘refreshments’, leaving us only with the unobjectionable if inadequate ‘do’.  With time fast running out, can you gallop to our rescue?

My letter was published (to my inordinate pride), and received this reply, which I think helpful:

Why not refer to the event as a ‘remembrance party’? This has a bittersweet poignancy and is perfectly dignified. Readers are welcome to submit rival suggestions.

To date, no Speccie reader has submitted anything better.

Can you?

Funerals in Britain are customarily followed by eating and drinking. Are there any time-honoured foods served at funerals? Are there traditional regional variants? Are there any funeral-specific favourites — the sorts of food people associate most strongly with funerals? I’m not talking generic sausage rolls and eggy sandwiches here.

Is the custom of taking food to the bereaved still going strong? I’m not aware that it is. An Englishman’s home is his castle, after all, an English family a very private affair.

I ask because every time I read a piece in an American paper about funeral food I reflect that they seem to do it so much better than us, and in far greater quantities. If you are interested in pondering further, there’s a good piece which illustrates what I’m getting at in the Houston Press here. Do read the blog to which it links, too.

Is that we just eat anything after a funeral nowadays? Is it the case that we very rarely sit down to do it, except on soft furnishings? Anything in that?

Any views? Is this a matter of any importance whatsoever? (What a lot of questions!)

AuntAunt Fidelia
Brought the rolls
With her
Green bean casserole
The widow Smith
Down the street
Dropped by a bowl
Of butter beans
Plastic cups
And silverware
Lime green
Tupperware everywhere
Pass the chicken
Pass the pie
We sure eat good
When someone dies

Funeral food
It’s so good
For the soul
Funeral food
Fills you up
Down to your toes
Funeral food
Funeral food

There sits mean
Ole Uncle Bob
Gnawing on a corn
On the cob
And who’s that
Walking
Through the door
I don’t think
I’ve ever
Seen him before
Isn’t it a shame
She passed away
She made
The best chocolate cake
Let’s hit the line
A second time
We sure eat good
When someone dies

Everybody’s here
For the feast
But come next week
Where will they be