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This blog originated in 2020. With the advent of Covid-19, I found myself locked in my house with my three-year-old wired hair Dachshund, Twoee. She taught me a lot during that first month and stayed by my side while we jumped from one thing to another…experimenting as we went along.


The site is arranged into four categories, each indicated by a picture of Twoee on the left. After all she did inspire me.


Penne’s Pantry

Cooking came late in life to me. After spending my career in boardrooms across the United States I found that I truly loved being at home in the kitchen. Here you will find recipes, videos of food preparations, and tips on cooking in general.


Trips and Tips

I love to travel, so stories came naturally to me. Read about various encounters I had along the way through some exciting cities in Europe.


Twoee Tails

Here you will find stories about Twoee. Read about her run for presidency in 2016, her adventures with her pals, and how she got involved with Covid-19.


Writers’ Workshop

Keep up to date with the novel that I am writing…if I ever get it finished; and various other short stories.

Never Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth! (It could come back to bite you)


Making Ice cream is a tricky business.  You need to be able to come up with unusual flavors, try new ingredients and be patient!  The patient part doesn’t really go along with my personality.  I only have one ice cream machine, and albeit it’s pretty amazing, it still takes time to churn a quart of ice cream.  I had to come up with a better method.

Early on in my ice cream adventure I had received an email from a woman named Bonnie. She was interested in what I was doing and totally supported the cause. 

“I have an old ice cream maker that my husband used to make ice cream for the children. Would you like it?” she asked.

My mind went directly to the old crank models where you had to add salt. I thanked her profusely and declined her generous offer. 

When Bonnie came to pick up her ice cream order, she handed me a loaf of homemade pumpkin bread and the ice cream maker! One look told me that this was not a serious machine.  It looked more like a toy; plastic, squatty and round like R2-D2 in Star Wars. And it was RED!  No serious machine is RED!  Mine was all stainless steel, compact with a compressor, and ready for action. 


After a few back and forth text’s and emails thanking Bonnie and telling her the machine was missing a part, she sent me a YouTube video and a link for the instructions. It wasn’t missing any parts.  How could I not at least try her machine? She’d been so nice and her pumpkin bread was delicious.

Every couple of weeks I churn a quart or two of Verdell’s Vanilla for my own freezer.  If this Plastic Red was going to ruin a batch of my precious ice cream, let it be my own flavor that it screwed up.

 I watched the video, froze the canister in my freezer overnight, (a step that no respectable compressor machine requires,) and I was ready to go.  After carefully assembling Plastic Red, I poured the ice cream mixture into the canister, set the paddle, and put the lid on. The instructions said to set a twenty-minute timer and…Voila…you are ready to dish up your ice cream. I hit the button.

ROAR, *!#%*^%... CLANG, @#!%*#... YIKES! I flew to the off button…what the H…I had put the lid on wrong.  After a slight adjustment I hit start again.  This time Plastic Red settled down and got to work.  This isn’t going to work I thought eyeing my sleek stainless-steel machine churning silently away on another batch of Molly B’s Mint.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned early on in my ice cream endeavor, it was never to walk away from a churning machine.  You’ve got to keep an eye on it in case it stalls.  You could burn up your compressor.  I watched as my shinning machine churned the liquid into a soft serve cream just before it became a finished ice cream.

 I looked at Plastic Red spinning it’s frozen canister around the paddle, expecting to see a liquid mess only to find the same soft serve ice cream. Could this be?  Plastic Red was making ice cream just as good as the expensive compressor model that I had been using.  I was thrilled… surprised…but thrilled.  Now I could produce faster and be able to fill more orders thanks to this silly looking little plastic ice cream maker.  This was great!

So, let it be said, Never Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth. You never know when you may find a treasure in someone else’s discards! Thank you Bonnie sooooo much!

 

WHAT'S IN TWOEE'S FREEZER (November 2, 2020)

Darby's Drunkin' Punkin'

Monty's Marvelous Malt

Cooper's Caramel by the Sea

Petunia's Peach 

Kensi's Chocolate Peanut butter

Molly B's Mint Chip

Toby's Tail Waggin' Toffee

Bula's Banana Bark

Rupert's Praline & Cream

 

A five-dollar donation for each approx. 8 oz. container is much appreciated.  If you wish to make a donation without the purchase of ice cream, please make your check payable to St. James by the Sea Episcopal Church, and mail it to  St. James by the Sea, 743 Prospect St., La Jolla Ca. 92037.  Please write Ice Cream in the memo line.  Thank you.

 

Please feel free to contact me through pennehorn@sbcglobal.net for orders or Text me.

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