Don't forget New Mexican stacked enchiladas.

" Enchiladas montadas (stacked enchiladas) are a New Mexico variation in which corn tortillas are fried flat until softened (but not tough) then stacked with red or green sauce, chopped onion and shredded cheese between the layers and on top of the stack. Ground beef or chicken can be added to the filling. The stack is often topped (montada) with a fried egg. Shredded lettuce and black olive slices may be added as a garnish. "

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enchilada

I hope to make this soon. But i always do the dip, then plate. I find it much better and cut above the 'caserole' version. Prepped, it is much easier than the rolled caserole. Dip and plate fresh. The caserole reminds me of catering like Italian/american delis, in every NY neighborhood that caters pubs for major holidays and sports events. The greatest hits, baked ziti, eggplant parm, stuffed shells. Mexican catering...guac/salsa, chips, tamales, tacos, enchiladas ...all in baked ahead foil pans with sterno under to keep warm.

PatiJinich dips.

We rarely eat out Mexican. Unless a step up from basic 'bang for your buck' mexican restaurants surrounding NYC colleges. (Giant burittos stuffed with fillers...rice and beans)

Prepped ahead steam table enchiladas with massive cheap cheeses baked....

But great alternatives a step up from basics...

RosaMexicana and this favorite restaurant among friends...

Wild Mushroom Risotto

Costco is carrying dried wild again after about ten years absent. The porcini and the carnaroli rice from big 'A'.

I use both mushrooms in a dry brine/rub. A good years supply.

Wagu burgers under all the quick pickled vegetables...carrot,celery, fennel, cucumber, red onion

side of fresh chips

froze two packets of mushroom risotto for arancini. Soaking beans for the weekend...

Always biscuits, never cake. Both our families....DH grew up PNW and i, EasternShore. Cream just shy of soft peaks. A handfull of strawberries macerated for juciness. No sugar added. Extra berries and cream at the table.

Just about every seasonal fruit has a traditional preparation here, but i'm always up for anyway someone wants to serve/share. No rules.

Peach cobler, blueberry buckle, cherry clafoutis, crustatta, dutch baby, etc.

I'd eat all of it LOL

My understanding is that it made with short fats such as butter or lard and that is why it is called a short cake. Butter is usually cut into the flour such as is done when making a biscuit, thus, it is basically a biscuit, but usually sweeter than a biscuit.

Strawberries and cake can be any kind of cake that you want, but it may not be shortcake. People call anything with berries and cream a short cake, whether it really is, or not.

I dont much care for the real short cake version of it.

No GF cake or muffin recipe to offer, but I do think it would be a good idea to copy and save the recipe to your own files when you find one you like.

I can share this one for brownies, tho - you could swap out the butter and use GF flour, I think...

1 Dish Cocoa Brownies

1 cup + 2 Tbsp. sugar

1/2 cup softened butter,margarine, veg/olive oil - or a mixture

2 eggs + 1-2 Tbsp. water

1/4 tsp. salt

1-2 tsp. vanilla(to taste)

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1/2 cup flour

3/4- 1 cup chopped nuts* (optional)

Preheat oven - 350F

Grease a 9x13 inch baking pan for thin brownies, 8 or 9 inch square pan for thick ones.

In a bowl, blend cocoa, salt & sugar , then add shortening & mix very well, then add eggs, water & vanilla & beat until slightly fluffy. Add flour & mix until smooth.Pour into prepared pan & sprinkle nuts(if desired) on top.Bake 20-30 minutes, or until edges pull away from sides of the pan & top no longer appears moist.Chill before cutting.

Top brownies - if desired - w/ this glaze:

1/2 cup semi sweet choc. chips

2 Tbsp. butter or margarine

1 Tbsp. honey or corn syrup

Melt everything together in a small pan over very low heat, stirring well until smooth.Drizzle(prettier) or spread over brownies while warm.

My Mother used to make cookies using a cake mix, they were very "cakey", and she made sandwiches with mint frosting middles at Christmas. I see some of the food blogs do the same thing with gluten free cake mixes. Just mix a 12 ounce box of cake mix, 2 eggs and half a cup of oil. Refrigerate for at least half an hour. Scoop out to the desired size and bake at 350F. Start with 10 minutes, bigger cookies take more time. As gluten free cake mixes go, I like King Arthur the best, they actually taste like a "normal" cake mix, although they are still a cake mix with that texture I dislike. They are also 18 ounces, so I think the egg/oil ratio would have to be adjusted.

I don't know if they would be hard when frozen.

Now you mention this, though, it would make a nice summer time treat for Amanda, maybe chocolate filled with a fresh cherry sorbet.

Good luck, I'll be interested to know what you decide on.

There’s a cake mix here which is dairy free, gluten free and egg free, and the chocolate cake tastes incredibly similar to the really good chocolate cake I have made for decades. If I have someone who has dietary restrictions who wants a chocolate cake, ”Free From” chocloate cake mix is my go to, because I haven’t found a recipe with nearly as good results.

Moon pies

Sugar or shortbread cookies dipped in chocolate.

I had a entrepreneurial fantasy of making dozens of original Maine Whoopie Pies (the right texture, no airy cakey stuff), packaging them in cellophane (they would be ice cold, frozen) and selling them for lotsa money to pay for my Total gas.

Most store bought whoopie pies are horrible with the chocolate part too much like box cake mix and the filling all fluffy sugary weird.

Costco frozen salmon portions are farmed in Chili and Norway. Suposedly sustainably farmed. Used to be wild caught. I usually avoid farm raised seafood unless i know it is approved.

Chef Eric Ripert of LeBernadin uses some farmed seafood that he has visited and researched for sustainability reasons. I just don't know what/where. (caught a documentary about his reasons).

FreshDirect sells wild and farmed from various sources,

Sixty South has received a "Good Alternative" rating from Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch, along with being certified as "Farmed Responsibly" by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, who recognize Sixty South among just a handful of elite producers worldwide addressing the most pressing environmental and social impacts of aquaculture.

They also have NYState farmed Coho, on sale now at 13.99lb

Coho is one of the most versatile salmon when cooking, beloved for its delicate and mild, clean flavor. Local coho are sustainably raised in a land-based, 100% freshwater recirculating aquaculture system in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. These coho have the signature deep red-orange flesh color and bright silver skin just like those in the wild, and are never given antibiotics, growth hormones, or pesticides.

I've been purchasing from Pride of Bristol Bay for about ten years now

I was previously buying from Costco when they had wild-caught.

We have salmon nearly once a week or every 10 days or so. It is equal in price to Costco. At about 22$ a lb. Free shipping. Dry ice. Flash frozen. We like the small portions in thick cryo-vac. A 6-7ounce portion is perfect for us to split. A ten lb box is about 25 portions. I have a half dozen recipes we use in rotation.

When visiting our families i have a box shipped ahead so i can make a couple meals to share and they are left with some portions for their freezers as a gift.

You might have a WildFork retail location near you.

The flash frozen technology the past 15+years has improved so much that i have been using them for the holidays. I think my first visit was x-mas 2022.

They gave me free delivery that first year so i just use that now unless i'm near my location in LIC.

I have started a photo file of meals for entertaining. Next event for a few friends is a boil-up that needs to be outdoors weather permitting...Memorial day weekend. If it is a stormy washout weekend, i will shift to a DimSum meal indoors and the boil-up will stay in the freezer for the 4th of July. Maine losterman are out again this week but prices will be high until late July. So a half lobster tail per person on the grill, crab legs, shrimp, mussels, clams and sausage is a feast. With potatoes, corn and cornbread.

(The smoked duck breast is excellent. The rack of lamb is the best we have had)

boil-up menu,

I buy canned Pacific salmon most of the time. Limited selection in my small town.

EF, I have no interest in engaging you, I have zero confidence that I would learn anything constructive. I've never heard you say much of anything that isn't a platitude, apparently for your own amusement, but I could be wrong on that account. You just troll no matter what anyone says. You rattle off ridiculous insults to people you know virtually nothing about. That says it all for me.

If you want to learn more about the state and future of fish as food, here's an extensive footnoted 2020 report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. You could engage with the UN on any of the points there if you're so inclined to argue over a whole host of issues and policy suggestions. https://www.fao.org/3/ca9229en/ca9229en.pdf

" I've never heard you say much of anything that isn't a platitude, apparently for your own amusement, but I could be wrong on that account. "

Count on it.

I don't respect anything the UN says or does, you can enjoy that link without me. The UN is a toothless, mostly ineffectual organization in my view with few accomplishments in 130 years of existence. Imagine the US having a one-house legislature with a structure such that no representatives from other than small towns and rural areas were permitted. That's the UN - 190+ member nations, over half of which have a population of under 10 million people. My state has nearly 4x that. The little guys with mostly no direct skin in any geopolitical sense game are the majority. The UN gives them a chance to take a whack at the big guys then run away.

It is a place for talking. I'm not sure much comes from that. There's a point of view that the only thing worse than having the UN, would be not having the UN. Either way, little difference.

ps - There's a place in anyone's food preference list for canned salmon - salmon patties with bread crumbs and egg come to mind as a quick fix from a shelf stable product. Costco's salmon burgers are better. Canned salmon is no substitute for the real thing, whether fresh or frozen. It does use up the lesser types of the fish that otherwise don't have much of a commercial market.

14 lbs is huge. Our NewYears ham was 8 lbs bone-in. I froze packets for fritattas, omelets, ham/bean/cabbage soups...packets of chunks cut off the bone and some thick slices for a Sunday dinner or two with braised cabbage and roasted vegetables or colcannon. This might be my last pack we are having tonight. Soup. (but they seem to breed like rabbits in the freezer). My dad likes a ham brunch hash with feta and eggs cracked on top.

I don't think i have something large enough so i would cut off some large-ish chunks and freeze since they come fully cooked.

Well, I understand about giving him a shopping list, but he said how bout one of those spiralized hams for Easter? I thought Hey what the heck! One less thing to worry about cooking! He's learned his lesson!

Cold gray rainy spring day here in Maine. Thinking about split pea soup. Especially if you have a bone for flavoring. I have to be in the mood for split pea soup which either I love or not so much.

My recent carton actually says 'unsized' eggs. Some unusually small. The smaller ones i weighed at 1.4 ounces. Most close to medium.

I read Ina uses x-large in her recipes. Most markets here sell medium, large and x-large. Never see small that often.

I have come across recipes that start with the egg weight first.

I then read that in a cookie recipe, too much egg can cause spreading, and too less can cause a crumbly dry cookie. A favorite recipe i would pay attention to the egg amount.

I have a favorite EdnaLewis corn muffin recipe that uses fine ground cornmeal. No sugar but very 'cake-like'. Super waffles and a cast iron bake topped with seasonal fruit is a great less sweet dessert.

I have never heard, or have come across 'peewee' eggs or x-small that is even smaller than peewee.

I did notice during the past few years, espcially lock-down, NYC restauraunts like small 2 pound breeds....Bantams. The legs and thinghs are big and strong. Small breast meat. Even cooking for a share whole bird or half bird dinner.

I have a friend with free range chickens who gives me eggs- I give her cake :-) The eggs are random sizes as she has bantams as well as chickens and often I get a duck egg or two. I just use my judgement as to how many eggs to use- I've been baking for well over 50 years- and it all works out.

sleevendog, the only "peewee" sized eggs I"ve ever encountered have been from the Bantam sized chickens or when I get new laying hens. They lay "beginner" eggs that are sometimes pretty tiny.

I'm thinking that with flocks being destroyed due to bird flu, maybe there are some young birds just starting to lay, and those are the ones providing the peewee eggs. Or not, some people like the little Bantam chickens as pets and they still lay eggs, even if that's not why the people have them.

Annie