Turtle Soup

No, that's not a play on words. I'm not kidding. We made turtle soup this week and it was an interesting experience. 

Ethan caught several turtles and decided that he wanted to see what they tasted like. We've both heard of turtle soup, but never actually knew anyone who's eaten it (that we know of anyways), so HE decided to try it. You start by using your wife's meat cleaver to behead your subjects (make sure it's one she doesn't want back, because it just may not stand up to the tough little guys).  Now, you need to watch out, because these things have crazy reflexes and will keep trying to bite you even after their heads are long since severed. Okay, next you have to detach the breast plate from the bottom of the turtle using a sturdy saw (warning, those crazy reflexes will kick in here, and the little guy will try to kick your hands away as you're doing this, watch out for the claws!) Now you can proceed to harvest the neck, leg, and loin meat from your victim. Basically, the easiest way to do this is just to cut the legs and neck off and then say to heck with the loin meat because in order to get it off the underside of the shell, you'd need to pull the spine out with a pry bar.
Now that you've butchered your turtles, here's what you do for your soup.

What you need:
Turtle meat
chicken broth
assorted veggies (carrots, onion, celery, etc...)

What to do:
Boil your turtle's legs and necks in the broth until the meat is tender enough to remove from the bones. Two turtles will produce about this much meat:

Return the meat to the pot, along with the veggies. Cook until everything is done, and then enjoy!
Okay, well unless you like to eat fishy tasting leather, I would recommend skipping that last part. I finally worked up enough courage to taste it, and it wasn't terrible, flavor-wise. I chewed and chewed that little hunk of turtle and after some serious chewing I finally spit it back out and looked at it. It looked just like it had before it went into my mouth. At least I can say I've eaten turtle, but can you?