April 28, 2023 Breakfast - Lax and Abel’s and smoked white fish and cantaloupe. Sara Jane’s Birthday party Dinner - Kyma Seafood in Stevens, PA

April 28, 2023 Breakfast - Lax and Abel’s and smoked white fish and cantaloupe. Sara Jane’s Birthday party  Dinner - Kyma Seafood in Stevens, PA

We slept well. I woke up at 6:00 and took a shower and dressed and Suzette did the same at 6:30.  I checked the Market and it was up, even after a monster day on Thursday.

Marty had driven to buy a box of fresh warm Einstein bagels and soon the table was with the plastic container of Marty’s homemade Gravad Lax.

He processes it a little differently than I do.  He washes the lax after it cures to remove as much of the salt as he can.

There was also a platter with sliced onion, tomato, and large cross sections of white fish.

YoYo peeled and sectioned a cantaloupe in a bowl.

Marty sliced and toasted bagel slices for us and we spread cream cheese and then slices of lax, or smoked white fish, red onion, and tomato on them and took several cubes of cantaloupe.

It was an old fashioned Jewish family breakfast with one exception.  YoYo served me some of the best Chinese teas I have ever tasted, including Big red robe, a special oolong, and a green tea that was the whole leaf, not chopped up or powdered. It was an amazing curated tea drinking experience.

After breakfast we drove to Jean’s house in Ephrata, PA and picked up Jean and drove to the Grove, which is an old camp ground converted into a craft center where Jean has a tent filled with Fenton collectible glassware to meet a collector who bought $500 of glass wares.

Then at 1:00 we drove to the Masonic homes at Elizabeth town to celebrate their Mother, Sara Jane’s 97th birthday.  Sara was in a wheelchair and living in the hospice unit, but was pretty spry for 97.

Suzette had picked flowers in Marty and Yo-yo’s yard and we stopped and then stopped at a Costco and bought a large Chocolate birthday cake, and bought three bottles of Chandon Brut and a bag of ice on the way and chilled the bottles.

Two of Sara’s brothers and a nephew with their wives showed up, as did two members of her old card playing group with their husbands, so there were 13 of us that celebrated from 2:20 to 5:00 in one of the dining rooms of her facility.

I poured champagne and Suzette served chocolate cake and Jean served chocolates that Jeff sent, so it was a pretty festive occasion with lots o& old stories of growing up in Elizabethtown.

After the party we drove to Kyma’s Seafood in Stevens, PA that features local seafood, mostly crab and flounder.

Suzette and I split a plate of 18 steamed Manila clams and a combination plate with two crab cakes, two crab stuffed shrimp, and a fillet of flounder stuffed with crab meat.

Jean ordered a Crab Colossus, which was a crab newburg with cream and lump meat crab and two side dishes. She chose a baked sweet potato and Asparagus and it was such a large portion that we took about 1/2 of the crab home.

We chose asparagus and green beans that are both local and at the height of their growing season.

The food was good but the emphasis was on the freshness of the ingredients and care with which the6 were prepared, not their presentation. Both dishes were cooked in a hot oven in enabled cookware for a short time to insure that the fish or crab would not dry out. We ordered a bottle of Sean Minor Sauvignon Blanc that went well with the fresh broiled seafood.

After dinner we drove back to Jean’s.  We heated three French Pain au Chocolates we had bought at Costco for dessert and tried to watch Stanley Cup Playoff hockey but soon faded and went to bed.

Bon Appetit