I invented something.

It's seasonal, it's delicious, (it's fried), and it features genetically modified ingredients you can find at any gas station in the U.S...I call them STUFF PUPPIES.

Stuff Puppies are a conflation of stuffing and hushpuppies, ie. they are deep fried balls of stuffing with a cornflake crust and a cranberry gusher center. And they are as delicious as any liberty taken with Stouffer's Stovetop Stuffing could ever be and as delicious as anything deep fried always always always is.

Here's how!

1. Aforementioned gas station supplies:

You will also need a fryer...I mean, I guess you could also use a skillet or deep pond of oil in a regular frying, pan...but then again, you could also just eat the Stovetop off of the stove like an ingrate...and that's not much of an invention, is it? SO, I have a little baby fryer I got for 20 bucks and believe you me, it's a messy little joy I won't be giving up anytime soon. You know what else is good fried? Everything! You know what else though? Chickpeas. 

2. Make the stuffing according to the directions on the package. This involves melting a stick of butter in some water on your stove top and dumping in everything else in the box. If you have a lid, you use it to cover your quickly forming stuffing. I used aluminum foil because I don't have a lid right now, ok guys? Then you fluff it up with a fork. You have a fork, don't you? I do, so that's what I used.

3. In the meanwhile, I made the cranberry gusher center by taking a can of that weird jelly cranberry sauce and blending it with some celery. I don't know why. I guess to try and be fancy and maybe a little bit healthy. In the future, I will use this ONLY as the dipping sauce and probably just shove some Craisins in the middle of these guys (also available at better gas stations).

Screwed up, upside down label not necessary, but fun if you can find it. 

4. Prepare your breading station.

5. Once the stuffing has sufficiently cooled to handle, start rolling it into small balls...the smaller the better, so they don't lose shape and crumble in the fryer. Mine got progressively more and more massive and I thought how nice it would be to have a kid around with small hands and the desire to impress me so that I could pawn off more labor intensive tasks like this. In this scenario the kid can also sing (and WELL) on command and knows all my favorite songs since your hands get real messy during this part and you absolutely can not flip the record over so you're left alone with your thoughts and the fact that you're already 45 minutes late to your Thanksgiving Dinner event. 

5A. Dip your smallish balls of stuffing into the whipped up eggs as a binder as old as time before rolling them in those nice smashed up cornflakes. 

6. Get an icing injector thing loaded up with your cranberry/celery concoction and GENTLY inject a little crancelery gusher into the center. I exploded a few pups myself and again, I think this is a step that I will nix in the future. It was too messy and to be honest as much as I like the sounds of the "cranberry gusher center" because, well, you know, when all was said and done, the "gusher center" was more like a faint cranberry ribbon. I tried a raw cranberry before, but that didn't get cooked enough to be gushing either. Again, I think a Craisin or two is the way to go and will also save you the $17 on the fancy injector. Because I grew up year after year shoving icing into old store bought icing containers with the tops cut off for future use, I'm not going to begrudge myself this purchase. I deserve it, you know? Plus, I have a lot of other ideas that involve cursive icing messages on them.

7. Keep going. You're not THAT late.

 8. Pack everything up and get to your final destination. DO NOT FORGET THE CORD TO THE BABY FRYER! You WILL have to go back and get it. It is CRITICAL.

9. Fill that fryer up with your fresh Saffola oil (no trans fats y'all!) and get that fryer freaking everyone out with it's scent of obesity and cackle of danger. Because you're not a crazy person and only have a baby fryer, you'll need to go in batches. That's ok. No one is having more fun than you are right now and Shark Tank will be on ALL DAY LONG.

10. Work on your presentation with those toothpicks from the gas station and ask someone else for a pleasing serving plate situation because you can't think of everything.

11. Impress EVERYONE! 

12. Pack up the leftovers and put them in the freezer for your friends who will read your blog 3 days later and ask if they can try one. Yes, yes you can. Just let me know when is convenient for you. 

*I did try some other types of stuffing -- a sausage cornbread one from Whole Foods, some other fancy variations from Whole Foods -- but Stouffer's was just the best and holds the ball shape well. I chose the 'Savory Herb" flavor because I feel like there are too few vegetarian** holiday offerings that still offer the kind of unhealthiness that feels right and necessary amongst "loved ones". If I were to come up with an ideal demographic it would be a pudgy (albeit undernourished), vegetarian girl in small town USA with dyed black hair and a family that just doesn't get it because guess what? They. Will. Get. This. "Bringing families together" wouldn't be a bad tagline.

**I know that Stouffer's**** Stovetop Stuffing isn't actually vegetarian because of some chicken remnant stock and flavoring involved in the fabulousness of this product, but I also know that when you are a vegetarian girl in small town USA you don't read packages that well and also, well, your options are limited, so you do what you can.

***I just noticed that this isn't even Stouffer's Stovetop Stuffing. It is KRAFT Stovetop Stuffing. That just goes to show you that good advertising trumps both time and things that are clearly labeled****.

****There's a GMO labeling lesson here somewhere.

I was a guest on the film podcast Bonnie and Maude!

You can listen to it HERE.

Hanging out, talking about my latest short, "American Gladiators" and the wonderful world of early Jane Campion (this, this, THIS!) with these two smarties was just super fun.

I was really surprised at how freeing it was to just talk about a visual medium. I mean, I guess as a video person, my whole thing is sort of figuring out what to look at. So when I first showed up, it made sense that I asked them if they ever considered recording video along with their audio recordings...but now I get it. I also get that without picture you can do things like drink a whole bottle of champagne without having to talk about it. This is good because there's just a lot to say.

I was a contestant on an NPR game show.

Spoiler alert: I lost.

To be a contestant I had to take a quiz, with each section of the quiz focusing on a different...skill. I think it must have been my final essay (a limerick featuring a famous individual) that qualified me to try and rhyme trivia answers with the chorus of Sisqó's "Thong Song" on the radio:

There once was a young celeb dubbed K. Stew.
She was just caught with a woman…but we already knew.  
Vampires weren't the only ones who were on to her scent.
But now it's all out that this straight babe has a bent.  
Gay marriage is new, but shopping at Whole Foods is basically saying 'I do.' 

Remember that? So March 2014 of me. 

Anyway, I'm highly competitive, so I think it's safe to say that my slowness to ring in can only be attributed to my true love of the "Thong Song". How can I think of an answer that rhymes, when I just want him to keep going and get to the good part?

Watching this video as a discerning adult, I have a lot to say: 
1. What a great song! 

2. I really appreciate that Greyhound buses are finally given their due with a glamorous opening montage. I mean, has this ever been done before? I don't know why because the companion fare deal Greyhound offers is a great way to get all the babes you know to the beach on a budget and I like a music video with a eye on saving me a little cash.

3. There's a shot where the camera tracks off of mustard being squirted on a hot dog sort of in z-space (2:15) onto thonged girls dancing. Besides summertime condiments being underrepresented in the music video sphere, I appreciate the North by Northwest like train-through-a-tunnel symbolism. There's information in the shot that the song merely hints at. Let me see that thong. OK. But why? Why do you want to see it? What then? This shot tells us. Picnics on the beach! True Love! Baseball games! A partner with the ketchup to go with my mustard, you know?! Very nice.

4. The narrative opening features a kid essentially asking an age old question about the birds and the bees. Who knew that the subject of "The Thong Song" is a curious 10-year-old girl?!  The song starts because this little girl interrupts Sisqó's phone call, holding up a thong and asking, "What's this?"  And instead of some boring old dad talk about how red lace thongs are natural, this dad of the hour comes up with a pretty catchy song that pleasantly demands, "Let me see that thong." Instead of yelling at her or the careless Mom figure in the background strewing her dirty undergarments all about the house. I mean, can you imagine what 2000 would have been like if Sisqó would have  simply snatched that dirty thing from the girl with no explanation what so ever? My friends and I would have ONLY been listening to "Say My Name" with the top down on our Jeep instead of a healthy toggling between these two songs and, sorry Beyonce, that would have got boooooring*. 

In conclusion: Thanks Sisqó. What a nice guy. What a fun dad. And you're right! Kids are people too. Call me a romantic, but I too firmly believe that kids everywhere should be given a poppy summertime jam they can dance to in response to the hard hitting questions in life.

*Here are the spoken commandments in between tracks on Destiny Child's "The Writing's On the Wall" for you to write down on the front of your notebooks:

Thou Shall Not Hate.
Thou Shall Pay Bills.
Thou Shall Confess.
Thou Shall Not Bug.
Thou Shall Not Give Into Temptation.
Thou Shall Not Think You Got It Like That.
Thou Shall Not Leave Me Wondering.
Thou Shall Know When He’s Got To Go.
Thou Shall Move On To The Next.
Thou Shall Get Your Party On.
Thou Shall Say My Name.
Thou Shall Know She Can’t Love You.
If Thou Can Wait, Then Thou Shall Stay.
Thou Shall Cherish Life.

I really hope at least one person got these tattooed on their back on a stone tablet because unlike Moses', these seem doable even though there's more than ten to keep track of...but let's be honest, "Thou Shall Not Think You Got It Like That" can go because it's too open ended, and you know what happens with open ended religious stuff, for one, fur hats in the summer.
 

I Made A Website! Finally!

larajeangallagher.com

Well, I didn't really make it. My friend Jonah did. And he's just the best. This is him.

Another thing I did recently though was buy one of his super fancy cutting boards for my friends who got married.
LOOK AT THE LOOKS OF THIS CUTTING BOARD: 

I don't even think they said thank you. Marrieds. 

I'd never seen such a nice cutting board before let alone cut something even remotely nice on something nice. The only other nice-ish cutting board I ever bought was to use as the floor of the kitchen in this little animation I did once. For some reason I could rationalize the $20 bamboo cutting board from Bed Bath & Beyond if it was actually supposed to be flooring (the "Beyond" they speak of? It seems so). I don't know what happened to it after that.

LOOK AT THE LOOKS OF THIS CUTTING BOARD FLOOR: 

Hollerings: 3 Stories in Wood. You can watch it on my NEW SITE if you want!

Today I cut something on a plate. It was fine.