About the Film
Meet Jimmy Olgers, owner of Olgers store and creator of his award winning turtle stew. Jimmy brings us along as he celebrates National Turtle Day in Sutherland, Va., and prepares for the traditional communal cooking of the prize winning turtle stew at his cabin in the woods.
When did Americans begin eating turtle soup and why did they stop? This noble stew was served at presidential inaugurations, on the first transcontinental trains and in crowded boardinghouses across the growing country. In the end, turtle soup became the victim of its own overwhelming popularity. It migrated from presidential dinners down to railway dining cars, and finally to the red and white Campbell's can in the 1920's. By World War II, harried cooks had long tired of dressing their own turtles, and cheaper and tastier canned options to turtle became available. Newfangled convenience products like TV dinners and Spam were the final strikes against the increasingly unfashionable turtle soup, and by the 1960's it had gone the way of pepper pot, served only in certain regions of America.
One of those regions is New Orleans, Louisiana and in the areas influenced by Cajun culture. Here's a poem by the New Orleans poet Philip D. Carter.
TURTLE STEW
Stroll down that lane
a mile or two,
you’ll smell Miz
Lundy’s turtle stew.
Not like the stew
you thought you knew,
it’s so much better.
But better not watch
when the turtles are
whacked behind Miz
Lundy’s picket fence
or you’ll turn vegetarian
post hence. Fresh
blood’s a gut upsetter.
