So what is it? The standard recipe is lightly toasted bread with a generous spread of butter served in a shallow bowl with steaming hot, fresh, whole milk poured over the top. Doesn’t sound good? Have you ever tried it?  Or maybe you know someone like my grandma, who did not like her false teeth,  she enjoyed the graveyard stew because it was so easy  to chew without her teeth.

Where did the name come from? The Brits seem to claim most of the responsibility but I had the good fortune of growing up in a melting pot of some of the finest people you would ever want to know and they all ate “Graveyard Stew”.

We had the Browns, the Glovers and the Deavers who were of British ancestry and they ate it as well as the Gallaghers who said there was a trace of Irish in them. The Schimmers found it to be a welcome change from all of that German sauer kraut.  We had the Bohemians, the Czechs, and Polish, and a bunch of Swedes and it was a staple for all of them. Even the Gonzalas’s ate it, only a little different version, maybe the best. They used flour tortillas, baked or fried crisp, broken into pieces, sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon before they added either hot or cold milk.

So why is it called “Graveyard Stew”? There are a few versions. Some say the toast resembles a tomb stone as it rests in the bowl of milk, waiting to be eaten. Some say, that’s what they ate for breakfast after working all night on the graveyard shift. Others say that if that’s all you eat you’re probably going to be headed to the graveyard at an early age.

As time goes by, things change so when our kids were little I tried to put a different spin on “Graveyard Stew”. When I mentioned the plan to my wife, her first words were “YUCK,  that’s disgusting” but finally she was willing to join in the fun. It was Halloween, probably the second most anticipated holiday of the year for young children.  As the six of us were finishing breakfast and I headed off to work, my wife said in a clear, loud voice for all to hear, “don’t forget to stop by the graveyard on your way home, we’re having “Graveyard Stew” for dinner.”  With visions of bones simmering in a big, black pot, the kids were off to school. When they came home in the evening, they were allowed to play outside a little longer so they would be hungrier. When the dinner bell rang, it was almost dark and the eating area had been given the treatment of a scary, haunted house, with shadows of tombstones and ghosts cast on the walls, eerie music playing in the background and with a jack-o-lantern made of a carved out pumpkin, providing the only light for eating. With the aroma of the bread being toasted, the appetites sharpened and the first bite brought the response “Hey Mom, this is pretty good”. “May I have some more”?

The children looked forward to Halloween again the next year and we celebrated the same way. As the children got older we sometimes had “Goblin Stew”, same thing only with sugar and cinnamon sprinkled on the toast that had been cut up into bite size pieces before the scalded milk was added. As the years went by, the memories of so many fun filled Halloweens were often refreshed when I would leave for work and one of my children would say, “Hey, Dad, don’t forget to stop by the cemetery on your way home, Mom is having “Graveyard Stew” for dinner.”