Last Suppers is a new column about the food we cook to celebrate and honor the dead by Virginia Willis, author of Bon Appétit Y’all: Recipes and Stories from Three Generations of Southern Cooking. You can find more of Virginia’s recipes here.

Food and cooking are about more than mere calories and keeping the family fed. In times of deep sorrow, food is the glue that keeps society functioning, that keeps us going.

I always laugh to myself when a platter of crescent roll-wrapped “little smokies” is the first empty plate on a funeral buffet, something no one normally eats on a regular basis.

Comfort food is taken to a whole new level when the realization occurs that “I am never going to see my grandmother Meme again, I will never hear her laugh again, I will never get to ask her about how she bakes her cakes again.”

I was working as a professional cook at the time my godfather Uncle Ray passed, but the matriarchs of my family banished me to phone patrol. All I could do was to watch wistfully from the other room as a bevy of bossy Southern women micro-managed making tea and heating up cheese grits casserole brought over from the women from the church. I desperately wanted to get in the kitchen and cook to help stave off the pain.

The jazz funeral parades of New Orleans bring together family and friends to pay respect and honor the deceased, and to celebrate the life of that person and often end with a table-laden buffet of Creole creations.

Church ladies prepare sit-down suppers in the piney woods of South Georgia, setting plastic-lined tables with long-cooked green beans and country ham; creamed corn; collards and mustard greens with deliciously smoky, pot-likker; a selection of honey-glazed ham, fried chicken and chicken and dumplings.

During the Jewish tradition of Shiva, the period of mourning the week after a death, family members and friends come to comfort the mourners, bringing food, such as uncut fruit or bakery goods.

Funeral food in the South is a category all to itself. The food should be comforting, not too fancy, and even in this day and age, is best if homemade.

Funeral Grits

Casseroles are the salve that heals a Southerner’s wounded soul.

I call one such dish “funeral grits” because it’s the perfect dish to take to the bereaved after a funeral. It can be treated as a side dish, held for hours in a low oven with few ill effects, and the leftovers reheat wonderfully.

This dish serves six to eight people. Lord knows, a dish serving less people won’t go far at a Southern funeral.

Use this recipe as a guide and make it your own. Add more jalapeño to give it some real heat, or switch up the cheeses and try adding freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, Gruyère or white cheddar.

Mama’s Sausage-Pecan Balls

Mama found the original of this recipe on the back of a box of Bisquick, a premixed baking product containing flour, shortening, salt and leavening. According to General Mills, the recipe continues to be one of their most popular.

Mama added pecans to the sausage balls, which she served during the holidays and at cocktail parties. I made a few additional changes and developed this “from scratch” version.

Dede’s Cheese Straws

When I was growing up, our nibbles were most often the cheese straws made by my grandfather, whom I called Dede, who would layer his cheese straws in a tin lined with sheets of butter-stained waxed paper smelling of sharp cheese and peppery cayenne.

Everyone loves these cheese straws — I once caught a party guest stuffing his pockets with them.

Recipe: Funeral Grits (Virginia Willis)
Recipe: Mama’s Sausage-Pecan Balls (Virginia Willis)
Recipe: Dede’s Cheese Straws (Virginia Willis)

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