In the spirit of a popular front against the forces of anti-poniness, the Anarcho-Syndicalist Pony Liberation Front (ASPLF) has allied with more mainstream pro-pony forces to bring you an officially sanctioned Bootleg Pony.

As for your author ? Well, the subject of my Scots roots has come up lately, and ranged from nicknames to the inevitable kilt questions (“Well ?”) to a sporran-and-kilt reunion of sorts with our own outstanding climatologist stormchaser. One thing that comes to my mind is the love-hate relationship Scots themselves have with aspects of their own culture. For example, do you choose to say someone’s “strangling the cat,” (no, not that …) or playing the pipes ? Myself, I love the bagpipes. Never learned how to play but given their skill with wind instruments I have some hopes for my kids (actually I think the youngest will skirl, the middle one’s more of a Highland dancer.) But pipes, hmmm, different things come to mind.

In the recent spirit of the Anarcho-Syndicalist Pony Liberation Front (ASPLF, it's not just a stifled sneeze anymore, it's a movement) we bring you: Bootleg Pony. An unscheduled moment of pony-ness for your delectation. It also marks your author's maiden diary, so later on you can just shrug your shoulders and say, "well, we knew he was a putz — just check out that first thing he wrote." Read on if you will, and know you'll come out of this story better than I did.

I love to cook.

As openings go, it's not "call me Ishmael," but it does say something true and, for me, important. I do love to cook. I also love the bubbling rush of food blogging that has started around here, too. It speaks to something in our souls as well as our tummies, and to part of the core of ourselves: a better relationship with both earth and us through one of the most fundamental parts of our lives, how and what we eat. I'd like to write some stuff that's a part of that.

This ain't it.

That said, the kitchen offers me home, canvas, and refuge alike. I value it all. The three squares, snack foods, all the different shapes and styles and flavors of food, baking (I'm a pretty fair baker), playing short-order cook to the under-sixes (two of them), holidays, what foods and the ways we make them have meant to different people and cultures, the whole deal. It's a rhythm, a medidation, a craft, a solid kind of work, a source of some real satisfaction in my battered though improving life. I'm not a foodie, nor a snob about ingredients though I like them local (either for me or the recipe) whenever possible. No fancy magazine subscriptions though I read cookbooks for fun; no wierd but lovely gear from the lust-addled pages of Willams-Sonoma. Just a regular kitchen of a pretty poor family where I get some solace and share a little goodness with my wife and kids.

Mostly. Sometimes, though, it can go terribly wrong. Let's move along then ….