How To Eat A Turtle

As I wrote in my latest prayer letter (which most have not yet received due to it being snail mail) I have obtained a Missouri fishing license in order to lower our monthly food bill. This is not a sob story to make people feel sorry for us (...wawa look at us we had to eat a turtle...). We feel fortunate to live on a lake where we can catch fish in abundance to offset grocery bills.

Anyway I have a trotline out in the lake that I have intended to catch catfish with. Right now the bass arent hitting too well. But it had been several days since I had caught a catfish on the trotline although all my bait was gone. Two days ago I went out and there were 3 turtles caught on the trotline (I only have 6 hooks total), 2 softshells and 1 snapping turtle. I was frustrated that there were no catfish and in an effort to bring home something I brought home the snapper.

I've never eaten a snapping turtle before, let alone clean one. It was kind of gross, and kind of tedious but after 2 hours or so he was all cleaned up.

Doesn't that look yummy? We had to first boil the meat to get out bacteria and the typical "muddy" flavor of turtle.

And here is the finished product. I can honestly say I liked it. Our only mistake was putting half a jalepeno pepper in the stew. We thought that only putting in half would be ok but forgot to consider the pepper was fresh. A little too spicy but all in all a satisfying meal

I doubt I'll go through it again though...