DC woman learns to 'cook through the dead' by whipping up recipes she finds on gravestones

Washington, D.C. (7News) — Inside Rosie Grant’s Washington, D.C. kitchen – she is preparing snickerdoodle desserts from a recipe she found on a gravestone in California.

The recipe she is re-creating will serve her family during the Thanksgiving holiday.

“It's from the grave of a woman name Annabelle Gunderson," Rosie said. "She was buried in California and she really loved Alaska.”

The viral Tik Tok creator who goes by @ghostlyarchive started traveling to graveyards to find recipes that people were known for.

It is a newfound passion she stumbled upon during the pandemic while studying at the University of Maryland and interning at D.C.’s Congressional Cemetery.

“At first when I started, I didn’t know if there was an audience for cemeteries and I was very wrong," Rosie explained. "There is a huge audience for cemetery Tik Tok, grave tok audience."

In fact, one of her cemetery videos has over 7 million views.

Rosie has traveled to three out-of-state cemeteries making recipes from gravestones.

She says the closest one to D.C. is in Brooklyn, New York – where she eventually met the family of a woman known for her spritz cookies.

“I flew to Brooklyn a week ago and cooked with the family of Naomi. They live in Pennsylvania now but we wont to the house that she grew up in” Rosie said.

Rosie says she never used to cook.

“Through this whole process I am literally learning how to cook through the dead” Rosie laughed.

She thinking about purchasing a plot in the congressional cemetery and said she's torn between a mac and cheese or a clam linguine recipe on her gravestone.