Sudah Makan? (Have you Eaten) Cook Book with Stories
A lovingly crafted cookbook collecting recipes from Sunny's childhood, created to commemorate the tenth anniversary of her mother's passing and gifted to her siblings. The recipes are accompanied by watercolour and gouache illustrations, with food memory comics illustrated digitally, weaving together craft, storytelling, and personal history into a single keepsake.
Sunny’s mum loved cooking (mostly Indonesian and Chinese dishes) and, over the years, has accumulated many pages of recipes that were randomly organised in various folders, scribbled in notebooks, or on the backs of magazines. They were often in different languages – Indonesian, Mandarin or English. It was not uncommon for the recipes to start in Mandarin and finish in Indonesian. These were precious keepsakes of Sunny and her siblings. At the same time, they would like to be able to make and enjoy the recipes without worrying about staining or ruining them.
Sunny wanted to commemorate the 10th year of her passing by doing something special for her siblings. So, she decided to collate these recipes, translate them all into English and compile them into a book. This way, the recipes are accessible to future generations.
She painted the accompanying illustrations using watercolour and gouache, focusing on expressing the love, warmth and cosiness she’s always felt when eating her mum’s food. Over the course of producing the book, it felt natural to also illustrate some comic pages about some of her favourite food memories. The paintings were enhanced in Procreate and Photoshop, then the book was designed in InDesign. The recipes were not tested, and where there were parts missing, Sunny would research similar recipes and fill in the missing parts. However, the preserving of recipes and memories are more important here than accuracy.
Sunny was able to gift these books to her siblings in time, and now they serve as beautiful reminders of her mother’s legacy and love.