Hi, Scotia, did you miss me? 

HOWEVER… the back end looks very different from what you are used to!

UPDATE: Biscuit reminds me to tell you that you must log in again. All the cookies got eaten when we changed over. (Good thing we have coffee in the header.)

Click on Write New Diary in the sidebar at the right and take a look around. The new dashboard is completely customizable — you can move all those boxes around or delete the ones you don’t like.

I’ll be here all evening, so if you have questions and can’t get the thing to work, email me for help: Kate at Politi Cook dot net.

If you are a real person, I apologize for the trouble and hope it is only temporary.

If you are not a real person, go away.

I call your attention especially to the newest one: Top Fruits and Veggies to Buy Organic. I did not compile this list; the original came from the Environmental Working Group, but I wanted it handy where I could find it again.

Hope it’s helpful!

UPDATE: Done. Now if you click on the little arrow to the left of the category name, it will drop down a list of the subcategories under it. As before, click on the name of the category to open an archive of all posts in that category.

And I just found comments by Anne and Scotia in there (btw, Anne, I like your link! I used the one I used because I’m just – well, overbooked! ) and de-spammed them.

Just let one of us know your comment didn’t post, and we’ll get in that spam-blocker and yank it out for you.

If you write a diary, the system automatically saves your draft at regular intervals. Or you can save it as a draft by clicking either the “save” button (returns you to the dashboard) or the “save and continue editing” button (keeps you on the writing page).

Once you are done with your diary and want it to be visible to everyone, you must click the “Publish” button. Drafts remain stored by the system unless you delete them.

I need to dink a bit with the presentation, so don’t be alarmed if things look different at times today.

Onward!

We do ask that you keep your diaries more or less on topic for this site: food, wine/spirits/beer (Hey MF! This means you!), politics, gardening, alternative energy, farming, the environment. That’s a pretty wide-open field right there (sorry, farmerchuck, no pun intended).

I personally do not want to see the candidate-bashing that goes on at other sites. If you have news or something good to say about your candidate’s stance on one of these subjects, go for it. If you just want to say “Mine rocks, yours sucks,” well, there are more adolescent places to post that sort of thing.

Anyway, please have at it! We need and want your voices on PolitiCook. This is your place as much as ours. Let’s make it great.