THIS EVERYDAY LIFE

COOTER SOUP. Just sitting around the house on this chilly and brisk morning, too cool for me to venture outside. Thoughts start drifting off into the realm of food and the magnificent tasting dishes that I now consider exotic. Weren’t that exotic when I was growing up. Hell it was just food. One of the things that ventured foremost into my memory was cooter soup. Damn the dictionary’s definition, in the eyes of a Geechie or Gullah, a cooter was fresh or salt water, snapping turtles, terrapins, sea turtles-all came under the definition of cooter. The creature was put on this earth for one purpose and that was to eat. Hell the sea turtle’s eggs weren’t even safe. They were considered a delicacy and in some corners were believed to act as an aphrodisiac. Now of course at the present time the sea turtle is considered an endangered species—Geechies and Gullahs being the law-abiding people that they are, now consider them off-limits. I think. A cooter can be boiled, baked, fried or made into soups. A lot of people describe the taste as that of being a mixture of chicken, steak and pork. People, that’s stretching it. Personally a cooter tastes like a cooter and is damned good. My favorite?--cooter soup. But before you do anything you’ve got to deal with the cooter’s existence. That’s right. Think about it, you ever see meat in a grocer’s case labeled turtle or cooter? Hell no. You have got to deal with that personally. That’s right ain’t a damn thing you can do with a cooter until after beheading it. Turtle soup is prevalent in virtually every culture in this world and in each the proper preparation of turtle soup begins with the ritual of beheading. Even after beheading, beware. Cooters don’t die right away. Their mouths will continue to work for a while and in the case of the snapping turtle, a bite can be lengthy and painful. Heck I have even seen a cooter crawl away headless. Startled the hell out of my uncle’s coon dog. Ok, after the thing has finally croaked, stick in a large pot of boiling water, size of pot is dependent on size of the cooter. All my kinfolks use to use the old outside, black iron kettles. You southerners know what I am talking about, the kind with the two loop handles. After some time in the water, take the rascal out and with a sharp knife, cut the cooter out of the shell casing and scrape the outer skin. Meat should be white then. There is going to be some meat left inside the shell, so you’ll have to use a smaller sharp knife to extract it. Now you’re on your own. I say that because every soup cook has their favorite combination of ingredients to use when making a meat soup. But I will say that at this point it is a good idea to boil the cooter meat until tender before adding any ingredients. You see cooter meat is kinda tough. Good luck with your cooter soup and bon appetit.