Empie asked me to join her as she picked up two large can­is­ters of soup to be deliv­ered to the fish­er­men on the wharfs at Gal­liee. Spon­sored by the Seamen’s Insti­tute, she and other vol­un­teers ladle out soup to the cold and hun­gry on a twice weekly basis.

As you know, she is the Sec­re­tary and one of the found­ing mem­bers of SRI at Home and is also Pres­i­dent of the South County House. A mother of three and grand­mother of five, her other vol­un­teer inter­ests are the NK Food Pantry, the Gilbert Stu­art Museum and sav­ing St John’s Chapel (where she sings in the choir, leads the bell ringers and serves on the Altar Guild) from clos­ing or merging.

As a Navy junior she trav­eled the globe and attended col­lege in Oslo, Barcelona and Buenos Aires before finally land­ing in Boston as a travel agent (of course!). For the past thirty years she’s been a local real estate bro­ker. She enjoys golf, ten­nis, bare boat cruis­ing with the dude (aka Capt Bligh) and loves to gar­den and cook.

She left me with the fol­low­ing recipe:

Crab­meat Mousse

• ½ can tomato soup
• ½ cup mayonnaise
• 1 pkg. cream cheese (3 oz.)
• 1 pkg. unfla­vored gelatin
• 1 can crab­meat (7½ oz.)
• Finely chopped onion
• Finely chopped celery
• Dill weed
• Drops of lemon juice (diluted in water per directions)
• Salt and pepper

Thor­oughly mix and heat in top of dou­ble boiler over sim­mer­ing water the tomato soup, cream cheese and may­on­naise. Use rotary beater to smooth. Add gelatin and stir.

Add flaked crab­meat, cel­ery and onion, lemon juice, dill, salt and pep­per. Place in lightly oiled mold and chill.

Unmold and serve with melba toast rounds (serves 10–12 as hors d’oeuvres) or pour into indi­vid­ual molds and serve over a bed of let­tuce as a deli­cious sum­mer lun­cheon salad.

This is the orig­i­nal recipe although I think there are sev­eral vari­a­tions run­ning around. Shrimp may also be used but it’s not quite the same.