[Sca-cooks] OP: shrimps

[Tara Sersen Boroson]

Actually, Miss Manners addresses shrimp in her "Food Traps" section.  
She says:

Shrimp served in its shell is picked apart with the fingers (Warning: Do 
not attempt with fresh manicure) and eaten by hand.  When it is peeled, 
as when a number of them hang on the edge of a stemmed glass bowl like 
so many swallows on a telephone wire, shrimp is eaten with a seafood 
fork.  When it is peeled only to near the tail, the diner has been had.  
There is no way of extracting any shrimp from it's peel with a fork, 
just as there is no way to find a receptacle at a cocktail party for a 
frilled toothpick extracted from a shrimp.

So, she doesn't give a firm answer for the partly-peeled-shrimp 
problem.  So, you might consider them to be "in the shell" and eat them 
with your fingers.  In other parts of her books she says that if you 
encounter something inedible, it should discreetly leave your mouth by 
the same method it entered - via your fork.  You could place it in your 
mouth, close your lips around it, nip off the tail, then remove the tail 
from your mouth with your fork.

-Magdalena

Tara Sersen Boroson

You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it for himself. - Galileo Galilei