DISCLAIMER: Many facts were altered to make the following a Christmas tale.

We were bored, cabin fever. What was supposed to be a two-day visit turned out to be a snowed in five-day ordeal in Mason City. Despite all this, we were feeling festive. It’s probably important to convey, we were stoned immaculate and as drunk as off-duty elves. Two words gave us focus and led us to the merriest Christmas since the birth of what’s his name. Pastry elephants.

Since we were in Iowa, the state that put the Podunk in Podunktious, it was a given there was at least two deep fryers in the house. There were four. After coating the kitchen with flour, and, in general, making a humongous mess, enduring third degree burns from splattering oil, and screaming at each other, we had created a two foot tall pastry elephant, all made of fried dough and funnel cakes for ears, covered and dripping with a combination of peanut and corn oil. Chunks of cake fused by peanut butter and spreadable margarine, it could barely stand on it’s own. Instead of letting it fall to the ground, we feasted like rabid Hawaiian pagans. After twenty minutes of chewing with mouths open, all that remained were glistening crumbs.

I swear to God, my heart stopped at least a couple times that night.

Funnel