Beyond Delighted.

Did I mention that I got a SERIES into the Society of Illustrators, NYC, "Illustrators 57"? Dang! I thought I had begun to slip as my work was not getting into shows and I was lame. Turns out, that I do not have to get into shows to feel good about my work, but it is nice to have a cherry on top, and an attaboy from a group of the best --a blessing and confirmation. I am so psyched. It is also really nice that a pile of more decorative folks got into this year's show--so I am not only thrilled about my work getting in, but also the company that the work has. Should be a good book!

I will need to pick 3 of them for the show....which will be rough.. and then submit all of them for the book. Wow. Should it be the food ones (Starry night of Corn and the Squash pix? or should it be the bird and the Kachinas?). Good things to puzzle over during a quiet dark wakeup in the night.

Gotta go. Just had to gloat.
(I know, totally wrong and unladylike....but hey...it's not everyday....)

Change of plans

Gingerbread House, 1847
From The Royal Book of Pastry and Confectionery by palace chef Jules Gouffe. Chromolithograph from British edition. London, Sampson Low, Marston, Low and Searle, 1874. Unframed.

As described by Ursus Books and Prints

So I am musing over where to start, where to place my oar for the Holiday extravaganza of Illustration that begins December 1. I mentioned Kawaii, and I am still thinking of that or at least aspects of it (some of the content and some of the palette), but I ran across this book yesterday that has turned that idea a bit. I was perusing One Kings Lane during my early morning free research time and was enchanted by an illustration/ a book plate of a very over the top Victorian Gingerbread House that they were selling. I trolled down the page to find the accreditation, and immediately googled that book and Mr. Jules Gouffe to end up on Google Play and Google Books. There in a wink and a blink, I had a full library of these gems (in PDF format) ready to read, devour and be inspired by. Another Rip Van Winkle moment. I can have a full library experience, find the books that I want immediately, and not have to get out of my comfy bed to acquire this wonderful stuff.

Here is the small Gouffe library I downloaded from Google Books to share with all y'all.

• The Royal Cookery Book
• The Royal Book of Pastry and Confection
• The Book of Preserves

I owe you the book of soups, which, thanks to Jules Gouffe's smart and well educated brother Alphonse, they are beautifully translated and workable even now. In the case of pastry, we might have to search to find sugar in cones and to get a hair sieve...but all else is pretty much the same. Imagine...soup!

So Jules Gouffe is a decorative chef (no kidding). Even his meats and seafood are whimseys of symetrical insanity. He continues to inspire today. He wrote these books which are , more than amazing illustrations,  wonderful poetry to time spent on craft, on skill and the magic that happens when they both come together with extrordinary materials. I bow to him and all that he teaches...and so, I think this holiday shot has shifted to lead with decorative food (a visual feast?) and see where it goes. I am not saying that skulls, and eyeballs, mushrooms, unicorns, rainbows and birds may not have role here, but they will not be the lead ideas in this body of work. I am still unfocused, but it is all good...and given a fun palette, it should be a 25 day celebration!

Jules Gouffe, 1879, Buisson de Homard- Ecrevisses. An explosion of lobsters and crayfish (not an exact translation by any means).

Sister Act

If having everyone in your family have their names spelled with "K" creating aberrations such as Kourtney and Khloe (which Squarespace is showing me with a red underline: meaning fix this), why not one up each other with the fancy, athlete husbands and the butt focus? Khloe has always been the most zaftig in the Kardashian crew so having her curves rounded out and sculpted by a surgeon is not totally out of the realm of possibilities, but now that there is competition....look out. The Hollywood Scoop acknowledges that Khloe wants to be the winner in this arena. TMZ gracefully acknowleges this competition: "Khloe Kardashian has entered the ring, and has challenged her sister by squeezing herself into these fight black jeans, and showing that Kim’s not the only one with some cake back there." And so it goes....picture against picture, sister against sister...when will it end? Ms. Khloe is really working the fashion by wearing horizontal stripes to define her odd proportions, and the world has taken note!  Plus, there are videos of Khloe twerking. I guess this shape is there just to twerk...other than having a bigger tuffet to sit on to eat your curds and whey. "To each his own", said the old woman as she kissed the cow. My sentiments exactly.

Kim Kardashian's Butt

"I’m seeing all these nonsense tabloids claiming I have butt implants-injections. Get a life!'
--Kim Kardashian

In a world filled with angst and concern, of thousands dying of Ebola, of 3 wars in far off places, of beheadings, of fracking and greed, and of a government refusing to govern, it is wonderful that our world of the twitter and tweet, our world of Facebook and Flipboard, of Pinterest and Tumblr can draw your eyes and minds away from the gravity of so many things and focus it quite directly on one thing. Kim Kardashian's butt.

Credit: Jean-Paul Goude/Paper

I am absolutely confounded by Mrs. West's derriere...and frankly didn't even begin to understand how this appendage has gone from something normal to a glossy, gourd tacked on the waist of a thin person. It is unnatural, and I wonder how it is to walk being that imbalanced. And, to think that this butt is rocking the world for it's absurdity, it's abberation, and like a car wreck, one's inability to look away from it. I hope it is an implant...because this sort of body part is unique, and isn't something one sees every day, let along in a lifetime. I am a photoshopper and can see how some creative drawing could take an okay waist and a plump derriere and by working with the background --one could easily redraw those proportions to have the odd image we see in  Paper. I love it that we have plastic surgeons debating how these bizarre proportions were achieved in such stellar publications as the New York Post:

“Not sure what screams #photoshop more, the 12-inch waist, or the solid color background?” tweeted Dr. Matthew Schulman, a New York plastic surgeon who performs butt lifts."

However, Molly Friedman at the New York Post in her article : "Want a rear like Kim Kardashian's? We tested products that say they can help". Ms. Friedman goes through the exercise of butt enhancements, essentially the "chicken breasts" of butts...from padded panties and boy shorts to pills such as "Gluteboost's Butt Enhancement Cream which contains magic such as "Voluplus" and "Volufiline" which if it does anything, it will give you cancer. I mean, everything gives you cancer, duh. Christmas is coming and who would expect a butt enhancement product in your stocking? Give it some thought, only $139.99 and you will be on your way. Or a subscription to Adobe's Creative Suite could give you the same thing without the cancer.

As I begin to troll around the web, there is a wonderful group of surgeons in Miami, Miami Plastic and Cosmetic Surgery, who for the low low starting price of $4,000 promises a Brazillian Butt Lift which can give you fuller, firmer and a Lifted Buttock! And they go on:

"The procedure goes by many names: buttock augmentation, buttock lift, butt lift, butt augmentation with fat transfer - they all mean the same thing.The procedure requires skill, as the surgeon is basically sculpting not only your buttocks, but also other areas of your body to give you that sexy hourglass figure."

"Why fat transfer?

•Change the entire body and it proportions
•Using your own fat from areas of your body such as your abdomen, inner and outer thighs, love handles.
•No introduction of a foreign substance into the body"

Pure and Natural. Simply simple. Big butt, small operation. You suck it from here and it goes to there. Presto. No need to wear giant pants, or to ingest Voluplus to look as good as Mrs. West post baby. A little surgery and get the bikini, baby.

What else is going to pop up to have us take our eyes off the important stuff that is on this same spinning orb as yesterday? I would like to say it can't get more ridiculous than this, but delightfully, it always does. Dystopic, indeed.

Amusements

Martha Stewart wearing the famous, "I made this myself, get out of jail poncho", high priestess of the American Crafters.

I have lots of amusements.  I call them amusements because that is what they are. They keep my hands busy. Sometimes they keep my head busy too. I knit, and stitch. I make little crappy things. I illustrate (I know people pay me for that...but it does amuse and entertain me too) and make pictures. Even sometimes, graphic design can be an amusement too...beyond a job. I underline sometimes. Correcting typos and grammatical errors may be a craft, but it is not, in any sense, an amusement. Only way through it is to do it... However, I love keeping my hands moving...and as I have recently clicked back into sockmaking for Rob and the frantic round and round and round we go, it has spurred me to think about my amusements and the space they have evolved to right now, in 2014.

Some people "do crafts" in their "crafts room" which is decked out in furniture and storage for (here comes the verb) "crafting". As in, "We craft together. Or, "Margie and her sister love to craft and scrapbook together". As a codger with word sensitivity issues (we can have food sensitivity, why not words too?), I love where the evolution of the verb to craft--and how, in the span of 20 years thse idea of making stuff that you got instructions from Good Housekeeping or McCalls Magazines, or just knitting or the like has blown into this industry of Craft and Crafting with emporia devoted to this...from the ever frightening Hobby Lobby to Michael's and the cinnamon-scented A.C. Moore. What is stunning about these palaces of the housemade, homemade and handmade:

1. Just about everything is made in China.
2. Natural fiber? Say what?
3. Crappiness pervades. No good colors. No good materials. No good sizes.
4. Art supplies are "take the price from Dick Blick or any other online resource and triple it and, oh by the way, sell only the lowest end quality/ student grade everything"(most noticeable in the crap paint with no pigment in it).
5. The frames are nice with mats (when you can get the double triple coupon bonus) but wait, one more time, just about everything is made in China.
6. No end to little bitsy bits....and crap you make out of little bitsy bits....like rubber band crafts and scrapbooking, and punchcraftery. I think I need some space to rant about scrapbooking.....
7. In the spirit of Corporate Innovation, there is a craft created hourly for moms  (not to be too sexist about it, but face it, who else other than moms or moms-in-training, or sorority sisters do this crap)...to have a reason to come back and shop the aisles at these palaces of making and creating.
8. Weddings have become a high point in the life of the Moms and to be Moms....and are apexes of the crafting enterprises. (As an aside, wedding supplies for wedding crafts are most excellent and hilarious to this would-be mom).
9. Ditto anything surrounding weddings...showers, parties, baby showers. Opportunities to make hilarious cakes, tasteful or "adorable" centerpieces, cards etc. And of course, favors, now not a single thing, but a "gift bag". Please sing along: "just about everything is made in China".
10. You can pretty much put a bow, a fluffy, gifty bow on anything in that store.
11. If you are a "decorate for the holidays" type of mom or mom to be, you need to get your sweet self in motion early on. so your kids can have monogrammed stockings; your tree bearing original ornaments, one more original and personal than the next (Superbowl 2013, Baby's First Tooth, Mom's Root  2014, How Dad forgot Mom's Birthday one more time 2014, Grandma's Gaffe at the County Club, and Grandpa Forgot his pants 2014. There is only so much time during the year, and most of it needs to be focused on the holiday of December to prove one's worth, "originality and uniqueness" (RuPaul Charles), creating things of great emotion and wonder. Creating things to hold those extrordinary moments close to your heart and "never ever let it go". That is where the magic of creativity and craft comes into the life of the fully realized mom.

One of the high priestesses of the Craftiness Movement is the great crochet-er Martha Stewart--bringing homemade from something we are ashamed of to a higher art of elegant, handmade (not homemade), and personal. Nothing wrong with that altar, but the blow-out has been something quite extraordinary. Now instead of just having some handwork you do, there are rooms in one's house devoted to this pursuit. There are craft parties and craft conventions. There are websites and new for me, the hands on training one can acquire from YouTube. Dang, with YouTube, the idea of surrounding yourself with books to figure out how to do something tricky and ripping it out a zillion time is antiquated methodology. You flick on YouTube and turning a heel of a sock is a cinch...and you can watch and do at the same time. Where has this Rip Van Winkle been sleeping? Love YouTube. Love being able to follow along with the chippy online who has this all nailed. If only learning code could be so easy. What an amazing thing that we can learn everything from our online tutors...from French to Macarons, from Drag makeup to how to turn a heel. It makes being homebound an opportunity to become most excellent at something wonderfully, exotically obtuse.

Future Tense

It's the time of the year that I fixate on Thanksgiving feast making and the annual promise I make to myself and my peeps, the annual Advent Calendar. The Advent Calendar happens Dec 1-25 where I attempt to create at least 25 illustrations or images and post them to this site (and Facebook, Behance, Dribbble) to make the holidays a bit sweeter and for me, fun. I have been doing this since my graduation from Hartford (2009)--so this year is the sixth year. I started willy-nilly with a focus on the Companions of Saint Nicholas around the world (surfacing Krampus and Zwarte Piet among a few) (2009), rolling into nutcrackers, swiss/german papercutting inspired and Maryushka Nativity scenes. 2012 was Candy coated, Gingerbread Advent. Last year, was for me, "I think I can I think I can" having just gotten out of the hospital after breaking my ankle and being a bit down for the count. But, I did do it...and now we have another advent on the horizon. What to do? How to start the ball rolling?

Well. in 2012 I ended my journey with Kawaii inspired illustration and so, I will pick up that thread and start with Kawaii inspired illustration this year. We are talking a fun, bright fusion of color both Asian Kawaii and western interpreted kawaii  as starting points. I am  going to be cute and yet, inspired by the more grotesque kawaii as well...taking clues from "PonPon Pon",  Sanrio "Hello Kitty" and her friends, "My LIttle Pony", Tokidoki, from the Blythe doll phenomenon, from popular culture to kitch. I will not be imitating what is happening in Japan, but more working with these ideas within my own hand--my own characters, my own symbols combined with the cute and the known that are out there already. Kanye West has a video "Good Morning" created by Takashi Murakami, an amazing artist we saw in Los Angeles who clearly grabs onto all of this Kawaii wonderfulness and throws it out transformed as a new idea. Clearly, Murakami inspires me. And there is the amazing creative Hayao Miyazaki bringing us Princess Mononoke (1997), Spirited Away (2001). Wikipedia links Miyazaki to manga, but his interpretation visually, may be manga derived, his subject matter, his iconography and sources are all based in myth, legend and folklore diving deepply into Yokai. Is this stuff cute? No, there are lots of dusty wigglies in this pile...not the frothy fun that Hello Kitty gives us...but for me, there is meat here...and begins to explain some of the darkness that we see lurking in the depths of anything this Marie Antoinette baroqueness.

☆Find me here☆ Tumblr: http://www.anzujaamu.tumblr.com Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/apricotjaamu Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/anzujaamu Blogspot: http://www.anzujaamu.blogspot.com Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/anzujaamu Hello! This is my new makeup tutorial. I recorded it with a better camera so I think it will be easier to understand.(Maybe? I'm not really good at teaching!) Don't forget to subscribe for more videos and thank you!

Am I going here because the reality of a world in chaos, of Ebola unchecked in part of Africa, the hateful people in Congress, the three wars we are currently engaged in, fracking and the clamp of the hand of The Man?

It is an adventure I let spin in my head in the deep darkness when I wake up at night...and see where it takes me. You will be along for the ride, I hope. Time to brew, percolate and stew.

Juju in the Air

Cazenovia Cider Label, Good Life Cider, Clients: Melissa Madden, Garrett and Jimmy Miller, 2014

It has been a while. I should apologize for my neglect, but quite candidly, it is what it is. The past month has embraced many things including an unexpected visit from Alex, Kitty getting into a pattern, a trip to Sagamore and the opening of the new Rongovian Embassy on top of the day to day. We have had some bloopers with the furnace and stove. We have had huge  hedges trimmed and things closed down in prep for winter. And then of course, there is the ginger bug.

Say what? A ginger bug? Well, let me wheel this back a teensy bit. My friends Melissa and Garrett along with Garrett's brother, Jimmy are making hard cider (label shown to the left). They are also making exquisite ginger beer from the organic ginger that  Melissa grows in her high tunnels here in the cold (not tropical) Finger Lakes. The Ginger beer they make is dry and lemon-y and makes a girl wistful for hot summer afternoons or cozy evenings by the woodstove. It is bright and shiny as a blue sky morning and is certainly not kids stuff. I helped Melissa at Cider Week (at the Rongo) --tabling and sampling to get their name out as their hard cider (designed by yours truly) is on the way. But, to get attention on Good Life Farm, they sampled this dreamy sparkling Ginger beer which the crowds went gaga over...and I thought...hey. I should make some of that.

To back up even more, I have turned my new little pantry room into Mommy's Fermentation Room. I pressed a ton of apples -- actually juiced them, and am making big containers of vinegar. I have one of apples. I have one that is apples with one big fat red beet pressed with the apples giving me a vinegar that is rich, deep purple. I have a container of "apple peel" vinegar which is made up of apple peels that are fermenting in water sweetened with honey. There is really not much to make vinegar...it is the cultivation of the "mother", a cloudy amalgam of bacterial that translates the wild yeast magically in the air (I know that there is "science in this" but I prefer to stomp my feet and hope that the juju and the good magic works versus something as sensible and rational as science can 'splain all of this)...and converts the sweetness to alcohol (hard cider) to then the next step which is vinegar. Sounded simple from my reading on the web, and it is. I just need to keep an eye on it and see how sour I will let it go.

The interest in vinegar came from the ton of refrigerator pickling I have been doing in response to our CSA being big on beets this year. And guess what? I am making some pretty fine pickled veggies with beets being at the top of list. They are good enough, we eat them for breakfast (more like I eat them for breakfast and offer them to the crew. "No thank you. Please pass the jam"). The pickled baby brussels sprouts are good too. And, speaking of beets, I am making a slaw these days from shredded beets, carrots, cilantro, oil and lime juice that we eat  batch I grate up another immediately. Big hit here at 2 Camp St.

So back to the bug. So Garrett and Jimmy are making this sublime organic ginger beer, and we are talking about it in the early fall sunshine out at their Farm. It dawned on me that they would love  my newest favorite magazine...so I whip out my new copy of Imbibe Magazine and there is an article on shrubs and Ginger Beer and we all get really excited, sort of like the happy bacteria chomping away on all the sugery goodness in the juice I had brewing in the Fermentation shack--one idea feeding the other. I ended up giving them my copy of the magazine-- and going home to take out all the electronic books the New York Public Library has online. Turns out, there are many ways to make Ginger Beer, but the most interesting way for me, was to cultivate a "wild-fermented"Ginger bug, essentially, a biga or a starter (as in bread) for drinks. It is ginger, water and sugar and lots of stirring and watching. Also...no closed jars (cheesecloth with a rubberband to hold it in place to keep the flies out but let the yeast in) because it's got to to the same thing that our friends, the vinegar do....which is to invite the bacterial to come and chomp on the sugar--and develop it into a fermented base which will give us a spritz or natural "bottle conditioned" carbonation.

Why have a pet when you can feed and be entertained by a Ginger bug. So much fun.

Here is someone who is intelligent and writes charmingly on the magic I am fumphering around to communicate:

The Splendid Table>>

So, I am busy planning Thanksgiving and am going to (hoping I am not going to the hospital this year) be prepping the whole shebang in advance of the holiday. I am making turkey stock as we speak. I have baked a ton of sweet potatoes to make a sweet potato dish (never, ever have done that....not big on sweet food, but I think its a worthy try)>> Ruth Chris Sweet Potato Casserole. I have all the goodies ready to be added to the stuffing bread and parsley all cut, sauteed and frozen. I have the better part of a dozen apples on the stove simmering in lemon juice and cider, ready to make into applesauce for the Thanksgiving leftovers. Tomorrow, the stock will be strained, skimmed and some will become a mess of gravy for the day of and the day after that I will freeze in advance. Gravy is a big deal around here. I will have extra stock for Thanksgiving cooking...ready to go...and a clean refrigerator thanks to all the stockmaking (now referred to, by the hipsters as "bone broth"). I have frozen a pile of grated beets (gold and red) with carrots for a salad. I also have hot beets ready to peel and pickle for another jar of red side dishes.

I have two huge stalks of brussels sprouts that need to be pared down and the sprouts  sliced paper thin to roast on the big day. I will prep the mashed potatoes the day before and let the potatoes sit in water and destarchify. There are the cranberries to be made and frozen. This year, I am going rogue and adding fresh ginger to that mix. I think that will be sublime.

I have baking to do (cornbread and pumpkin bread, ginger snaps, and some pecan bars).  A friend is bringing pies. I might even make a spice cake as I love them...and having a  robust dessert offering is just plain fun and feasty.

Gotta go. Tomorrow I will rant about my planning around this year's advent calendar. I am smiling a lot to myself as I am amused by where this is going.... Lets hope the work measures up to the dreaming.

today

Had a nice talk with the Syracuse illustration students on Wednesday. I was ready, armed, prepped and fully caffeinated--and it was all via Skype complete with a slide show, me with a microphone and it went off without a hitch. Thank goodness I practiced a few times prior to the big event, so I didnt look like "the dumb mom" and could retain a tiny bit of hipsterness. Read tiny. It went well. Some good and really insightful questions. And now I have a few new friends on Facebook which is a gift. One of those new friends and I are going to talk today. He responded to my work that was triggered by my visit to Southern Utah University and Ron Spears. I loved it...and was stunned by the landscape, and all things Native American. I came home, on fire (read, I started to research) and did these few illustrations about religion, symbols and the triad of squash, beans and corn.

Ever since my big dose of cultural, sexual and gender related education from Ms. Kitty and Hampshire College, the concept of cultural appropriation has been bothering/itching me. Is it right to be inspired by other cultures, to generate work interpreting that work or is there a wrongness to it? There are illustrators/ artists who have made their reputation and name by being of and derivative of a culture, but we white folks with deep white culture (you know, mayonnaise and Mayflowers) do not have the depth of that experience (or at least to my thinking). I am talking with my new illustration friend, and we are going to get to that. So, thanks to  Syracuse, I get to go to school again.

Angel Effigy, Q. Cassetti 2014, pen and ink with digital enhancements.

Memento Mori.

Another year. Another anniversary. Another day to reflect and project. Another chance to change, to grow and evolve. Another year of wisdom and thought. Another year to embrace and focus. Look forward, look backward in a Janus way. Hold the good and let go of the bad or at least try to let go of the bad...(medication helps). Happy Birthday to me. No frosting on this cupcake...but a steely look at funerary markers and death effigies.

I think I would like to take the rest of the day off and just do something fun, like draw or something. But they are all waiting with their projects in their hands needing immediate turn arounds. What was I thinking? Maybe some lunch might work instead...and some upbeat loud music on Spotify is a close second.

Dare to Know

Dare to Know. Sometimes turning back the corner of the rug to see the dust or the squiggly things is a horror both physically and mentally. Lots of squiggly...and fortunately for me, it often is less bad than what was anticipation. Just to say it, anticipation is a kill joy...and can stop anything in it's tracks. Remind me the next trip through this vail, that anticipation is not a skill worth  honing. But, to get the steam up to know, to learn, to understand...that sometimes is a test, but the education can take you one click further.

These guys are inspired by American Colonial headstones...a classic Q. go-to. Haven't been there in a while, and somehow, right now, this well is deep and beckoning. In this iconography, I can find succor and understanding. Sorry about my downer-ness. Just is...right now. 

Early Fall

A new wonder has entered my life!  She has me jumping and moving to her beat, cajoling and teasing me to get real with all that silly business stuff...telling me about knitting socks with names on the toes by the fire, or needle felting or spinning honey from her 6 hives to make sweet, to make lip balm and pots of luscious lavender perfume. She charms and enchants while she holds messy piles of bills and invoices, envelopes and inquiries. She nudges and laughs. She is a wonder...and she has pointed my head in a little less of a sad place than it has been and is in a very Mary Poppins-ie way, been giving me a spoonful of sugar to go with my medicine. How delighted this girl is with her new friend and her energy and desire to change and fix. How blessed am i!

Today is a day for CSA, for beets and kale, maybe a squash or two...parsley and celery and those things harvest. Maybe a brussels sprout? I have been possessed by refrigerator pickles thanks to the inspiration of my Tburg pals Leah and Cathy who are quick to pickle...and seemed to make it seem like no biggie...and so I tried too. I have pickled cucumbers, zucchini, beans, cauliflower, organic onions, and beets (red and yellow) with a soft brine, mustard seed, coriander, garlic and pepper. Not too sharp. Not sweet. The import of apple cider vinegar comes to the fore...and now I am on it....tasting and trying from the clear to the cloudy. And, I squeezed/ juiced some apples and am making my own. We will see.

The best pickle was the coriander/onion chutney I made from a book on East Asian pickles I got electronically from the NY Public Library. Jeez Louise. Home run. I will post...and you can riff on this idea...and lay on the lime juice and coriander...Divine.

Fall is on the way. Jackie and Ian Merwin are going live with their cider soon...and were highlighted in a lovely New York Times article on my NYS Cider buddies...Take a look: Sips from a Cider Spree in New York State by Freda Moon

Here is a sneak peek at Jackie and Ian's Cider Label (to the left). I love the font. So so fun and so right for this farm. Black Diamond Farm is on the old Black Diamond Railway line...and thus the name. Now the Black Diamond is becoming part of a local trail system for walkers/runners/bikers. And Jackie and Ian are amazing..so to have the top of the apple pyramid bringing out cider is something to really celebrate. It is so delightful to have another one out there along with my friends at Redbyrd Orchard Cider...and another on the way as well. And these three are all from Tburg...so backyard deliciousness.