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comment by sledge
sledge  ·  3881 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: I found a snapping turtle

I tried turtle soup once when I was visiting the Cayman Islands, many years ago. It sounded like an interesting Caribbean delicacy, so I figured, when in Rome...

The taste itself was fine, but I couldn't get rid of the mental imagery of what a turtle is, and what I was eating. My brain would replay an image of a turtle, complete in its shell, and then I'd focus on what was actually in the soup-- the meat of the turtle, which was the scrawny, reptilian flesh that was underneath that shell. I couldn't finish my bowl, and haven't had any desire for it since.





humanodon  ·  3881 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah, I understand that completely. Is the food from the Cayman Islands generally good otherwise?

sledge  ·  3881 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Honestly, I don't know. After such a long time, the turtle soup has remained my only real memory of the food I had there, because it was the only food I had that I was totally unaccustomed to eating.

thenewgreen  ·  3881 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It's amazing how thinking too much about your food source can really inhibit it's enjoyment. Especially when eating meat. I'm curious though, what did it taste like? I would imagine that it's a bit fishy and somewhat earthy too?

sledge  ·  3881 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It wasn't a pronounced taste, although to be fair this was probably around 20 years ago (good lord, really?) so I'm not sure how faithfully my memory serves. It was kind of a delicate texture and semi-overpowered by liberal amounts of jerk seasoning and some spices (cinnamon and nutmeg, if I recall).

The first few bites went down well with a Red Stripe, but I kept envisioning the naked turtle sans shell and my stomach started to lurch a bit. I finished what I could so I wasn't too wasteful, but it was a fair amount of effort to keep it down after a while.

thenewgreen  ·  3881 days ago  ·  link  ·  

20 years is a long time to expect someone to remember the taste of soup they had. Thanks for trying :)

The crazy thing is, the turtle that your soup was made of could still have been alive today. Snapper turtles can live up to 45 years. Pretty amazing.