About Us

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We are two Indonesian-Californian siblings who love to cook and adventure together. Holil, the big brother, who loves to experiment with recipes, develop a new dish from of leftovers; foods and ingredients, make any leftovers look appetizing to the eyes. Nana, the baby sister, has the passion and love for baking and cooking very traditional Javanese foods, recipes that our mother and grandmothers used to cook for us growing up in the village. 

I migrated to the United States for my education as soon as  Nana was born in 1998. We never lived together under the same roof until 2015 when Kevin, my partner, and I invited Nana to live with us in California to pursue her higher education and experience the life and family I established in the United States. Although we were apart for many years and literally did not know about each other, our love and connection have always been strong. I saw her growing up from the distance. Since Nana moved to the United States, I began to discover a lot about her and her passions. Mutually, she introduced me to her world, social media life, where I began to to spend more time together discovering and sharing new things.

Growing up in all boys family (before Nana was born) in the little village of Situbondo, East Java, I used to helped my mother cook to feed the family. I have always been curious, different in many ways, and interested in helping my mother. I acquired her sense of flavors and resourcefulness from the very beginning. In her style of cooking, nothing was wasted. Every meal was created with intention and love, to nurture all of us. Life was hard back then, but we were all happy and grateful.

When I moved to the United States, I lived with my sponsor, Papa Pierce Smith and his family, during my undergraduate studies. I am honored and blessed to be embraced by this new family and to call them my family. With and because of them, I began to discover new flavors and ways of cooking. My world was enlightened but I also learned how food cultivation and commercialization in the United States create a culture of waste. We can debate and discuss how our food commercialization and consumption contribute to environmental and social issues. 

However, on this blog, we would like to focus on how our food consumption, large food portion culture, leads to wasted leftover foods or at the very least leads us to consume boring leftovers contributing to the common perception that leftover foods are insipid and not interesting. One may argue the contrary but almost everyone in many households in America, and everywhere in the world think less of leftover foods, therefore leftover foods remain secondary. Leftovers are not seen as something sexy, appealing to eat, let alone to share with others. 

We have seen plenty of leftovers served the same way over and over again causing potential dislike of the food. We all experienced doggie bags or leftover foods bags stacked high in our refrigerators, with us not knowing what to do. I had a personal anecdotal experience when I was an undergraduate student where my American family made a big bowl of spaghetti enough for 5 people for 5 days (LOL). After the third day eating the same thing, to my surprise, I said I was absolutely done with spaghetti for a year. Of course, I said it politely in a good Javanese boy manner. LOL, or not!  

OUR MISSION:

We would like share our way and passion to cook leftovers; foods and  ingredients. It is an easy and economical way to cook a delicious and beautiful looking dishes. We believe that everyone can and should make leftover foods appealing, beautiful, and most importantly delicious to eat again. 

We will also share our gardening experience to spice up our cooking and contribute less to food waste.

Holil & Nana

P.S. Our pups (Tchad/Left, Mali/right), they too believe in no waste as well.