Liz, I never even noticed you had not said 'fruit' on the subject line. LOL! Cynthia and all, here on the NW side of San Antonio fruit cocktail shrimp plant is just as hardy and drought tolerant as the red shrimp plant. In a mild winter like last year it didn't freeze all the way back where it was against a wall. The tops that did get nipped and fell over kept the stems green so I just left them in place until spring. Once fruit cocktail is established it comes back very quickly and blooms continually until the first freeze. Well, I take that back. In protected places both the fruit cocktail and the red shrimp flowered all last winter. It gets a little over two feet tall and is very thick and bushy spreading itself around nicely from the roots, and though you will get a few plants coming up from seeds blown around it is not 'invasive.' BTW, I never see anything like a seed pod, but some plants have come up some distance from the original planting so I have to assume it is from seeds. Those volunteer plants don't get much water. They wilt, but I'm amazed they survive and perk back up when I think to water them. It is definitely on my favorite plant list! Incidentally, my 'soil' is shallow black clay over limestome. No bugs bother it and the foliage is healthy and green even when the volunteers come up on pure caliche. Like everything else it gets a few sprinkles of fertilizer now and then.

Here is a recipe for shrimp soup that I like: SPICY SHRIMP SOUP WITH LEMON GRASS The most popular soup in Thailand. A classic Thai seafood soup of excellent taste. Minutes quick for easy preparation. Lemon grass and kaffir lime leaves are there for flavor, but not to be eaten. 1/2 pound shrimp 4 cups water 1 stalk fresh lemon grass, sliced 1 can (8 oz.) straw mushrooms, drained 2 kaffir lime leaves (or regular lime leaves or 1 tsp lime zest) 1 to 4 tablespoons fish sauce * 1/4 cup fresh lime juice 2 green onions, sliced 1-2 tablespoons chopped cilantro 1 to 4 red chili peppers, seeded and chopped or 1/2 teaspoon red chili paste Garnish: Cilantro sprigs Devein shrimp; leave shells on for color, if desired. Bring water to a boil. Add lemon grass and straw mushrooms; immediately reduce heat to medium-low. Add shrimp and cook for 3 minutes; stir in fish sauce and lime juice. Sprinkle with green onions, cilantro, and red chili peppers, if desired. Remove lemongrass and lime leaves and serve hot. Garnish with cilantro sprigs. Makes 4 servings. Note: Fresh mushrooms can be substituted for the canned mushrooms, but add at end of cooking time. Idea: Spicy Thai Vegetable Soup can be prepared by substituting tofu and mixed vegetables for the shrimp. Use 1/2 teaspoon of salt instead of the fish sauce. *The amount of fish sauce used in this recipe depends on the brand selected and personal taste. This is an old recipe (from the 1980s) but I still make it. I never used canned mushrooms, however, and generally use Kaffir lime juice. Use your shrimp stock for part of the water, and the flavor will be improved.

Okay, post mortem. The spanakopita was good. I ended up assembling them, then freezing, and baking them at her house, with plenty of melted butter and truffle salt sprinkled on. The filling was spinach, onion, egg, garlic, nutmeg, feta, ricotta. The main problem was that the filo shells were kind of tasteless, merely crunchy and flakey and buttery. Next time I will use an herb butter when assembling the filo triangles. But people loved them anyway. The meatballs had good flavor, but were kind of dry. They were pork, beef, lamb, spinach, couscous, onion, garlic, with a spicy bread crumb exterior. But meat today is too lean. Hence the balls weren't juicy enough. Next time I'll use the dim sum trick of incorporating some gelatinous stock. The wings were fine, that is a reliable recipe. Steam wings to render fat, then toss in oil and salt, roast until browned, then toss in melted butter with salt, garlic, cayenne. My friend also had salsa, chips, celery, blue cheese dressing. People brought beer and champagne. Her kitchen is hard to work in. Her cutting board is a 4" x 6" sheet of pebbly glass. Really. Her knives are as dull as spatulas. Ugh. I'm not sure what she normally eats. Sandwiches, maybe. This friend is a cyclist. She leads groups on 100 mile bicycle rides, routinely. We met on one of her rides. For her birthday, she hosted a breakfast at her house, then led fifteen friends on a 50 mile ride in the rain that turned out to be very hilly and tough. Just six finished the ride, and they got to her house just as I was arriving with the food. So I was finishing and plating my food with these ravenous, soaking, exhausted cyclists hovering. We had to bring the food out in shifts, so that the later arrivals, who hadn't gone in the ride, would actually have something to eat. I never did end up making the shrimp mushroom dish. Time got away from me. But I'll make it later maybe this weekend. It sounds promising. I left about 8 pm, just as things were getting going. Found a guy there who knew how to cook, put him in charge of monitoring and serving the remaining shifts of food. Good group of people, some I know pretty well from bike rides, but I wasn't really in the mood for a partay.

Caesar dressing has Parmesan cheese in it (when I make it), and I would not want cheese with shrimp, but it also has anchovies in it (and Worcestershire sauce), which would go well with shrimp. I use lime juice instead of lemon when I make Caesar dressing. It is redundant to say "garlic aioli" since aioli means garlic oil in Catalan and Provençal. This is somewhat similar to the word aglio in Italian. Caesar dressing is significantly different from lemon aioli because of the anchovies, Worcestershire, and Parmesan cheese, which are three strongly flavored ingredients. Lemon aioli is probably better for shrimp than Caesar dressing. People can dip the shrimp as much or as little as they want, in order to be able to still taste the shrimp.