Funeral Potatoes

The saying goes that if you want to see people acting weird, go to a funeral or a wedding. The saying would be even more accurate if it mentioned the food. There is always good food at funerals and weddings.

This is especially true for Italian and German families. I would know. My birth family are all Italians. My stepparents’ family are all Germans. The Germans make the best pies and the best casseroles. The Italians have the monopoly on bread and pasta. Obviously.

At the beginning of my dad’s courtship to my now-stepmom, they had a lot of discussion over how they were going to merge the two families. My stepmom comes from a long line of type-A personalities. They don’t like clutter. They find meaning in being proper, and they can hit you with a snide comment two seconds after giving you the best compliment of your life. My dad’s side, however, is loud and messy. They speak their minds even when it isn’t called for or appreciated, and they will give you the shirt off their backs and then complain about it afterwards. Both families will love you fiercely. And they will honor and defend their family recipes at all costs.

With such vast differences, it was the food that truly brought the two sides of the family together. It was a summertime funeral--the funeral of my stepmom’s mother Dorothy. Both sides of the family made more food for the wake than could possibly be carried home. There was so much that we ended up giving take-home baggies to the funeral attendants. It was a beautiful service. Full of tears and speeches that I remember to this day. My stepmom, following an old family tradition, made cheesy casserole potatoes. With so many food choices, it should have been hard to try everything. But as she was the one who made it, every single person on my dad’s side had a bite. The dish was so good that it was devoured within an hour.

A week or so later, after the intensity of the funeral had worn somewhat, my Italian family started asking about the potatoes. “What about those funeral potatoes?” they would ask. “When will we get the recipe?” So many times was the recipe requested in that fashion that my stepmom started referring to them that way. Months and even years after, when talking about that dish, she would refer to them as funeral potatoes.

The first time she did this at a party outside of family, her peers looked at her with wide eyes. “Funeral potatoes?” they asked, shocked. “You named them funeral potatoes?” And so my stepmom launched into the backstory of the potatoes. How they were a family recipe passed down from her mom to her. How Dorothy’s mom gave it to her before that. How the potatoes were a hit at the funeral. And how they highlighted an already beautiful and meaningful service. Time had passed since her mom’s passing. Time in which topic of her mother had gone stale. But now here she was, remembering her spirit just like it was yesterday.

We still bring these potatoes to gatherings and summer picnics. And we still get those weird looks. And my stepmom gets to talk about her mom each time. My dad even chimes in, talking about his family and how much they loved the potatoes, too, even though his mom made the better spaghetti.

What I’ve learned from all of this is threefold. One: Funeral potatoes are, by far, the best summer food. Two: food brings people together as a shared interest and experience. And three: more people should name their food after funerals. Dorothy’s name is still being spoken aloud at every group gathering. And I have since seen a change in how my family relates to death. So often, the topic of death is avoided or feared. But it is an experience that we will all see and all eventually face. Avoiding death often involves avoiding the person who died, and how sad is that? To see a person you love disappear in all ways, including speech? Speaking of them is the closest thing we have to bringing them back again.

My stepmom once asked the family if we should rename the funeral potatoes to party potatoes. But the resounding answer was no. My family was brought together by this food. And we’ve all learned a thing or two about life and death because of it.

That is the power of a good dish.