Well, THAT doesn't sound safe to eat!

FMD Crankmonkey brings this culinary WTF to our attention:

There was a hotly contested cakewalk, a patriotic parade and a beauty pageant featuring girls of nine different age divisions at last weekend's annual celebration of turpentine in Portal, Ga. -- all the festival was missing was the substance celebrated.

"We weren't able to find any tar," explains Jerry Lanigan, vice president of the Portal Heritage Society.

Without pine tar, festival organizers can't make turpentine in the town's still, which until this year was the nation's only continuously operating turpentine cooker. And without turpentine, there's no rosin, which is the fancy name for the vapors that rise from heated tar. And without rosin, there aren't any rosin potatoes, a staunchly vernacular folk dish that was developed in the 1930s by workers at Portal's turpentine plant.

"Everybody loves them," Lanigan says of the potatoes, which bake in a pool of melted rosin. "We have people who try them and say 'I don't know why I haven't tried them before.' It's one of the old arts."

Speculation abounds here in The Mine as to how this happened. My personal theory...

CLETUS: Hey, Jethro! Catch mah tater!

JETHRO: Huh?

POTATO: *thud*

ROSIN: *squish*

CLETUS: Gulldurnit, Jethro! Twas mah last tater!

JETHRO: It jes landed-ed in deh pinetar leavins. Tis still eat-able.

CLETUS: ....

JETHRO: See? *bites into first rosin potato* Now that's right tast-eh!

CLETUS: Gimme mah tater! *has second bite of first rosin potato* No foolin', tis snackin'!

And thus began the decline of The South due to lung and central nervous system damage, renal failure, and severe burns.

Fictional "Cletus & Jethro's Rosin Taters" ad Shooped by yours truly.