all small and cute

I've been nerding out on ultra-light alcohol burning stoves.  I've finally settled on this little guy and I'm really excited to start cooking with it (in my backyard of course, to practice).  I had all kinds of plans to make my own stove out of a tuna can or a pop can (as all the hardcore PCT thru hikers are doing) but after adding up the cost of my needed tools, mistakes, etc. found that buying this little friend for about $30 bucks was totally worth it...

The best part about these little stoves is that you can burn almost anything in them:  Heet, Everclear, denatured alcohol, paint thinner...  which makes purchasing fuel along the trail (in tiny little one-horse towns) much easier. 

This is what the cool people will be using.
I'm not one of the cool people.  I'm kind of boring and think I want a reliable thing that I can't accidentally crush by sitting on my backpack... So I probably wont have much trail credibility, but at least I will have hot oatmeal.

I think I will like moving away from the MSR and  the reliance on white gas which is amazingly hard to find, I've realized.  More importantly, I like the idea of cooking my food over some of this:

 Or maybe some of this...

Or, perhaps this...

Just the thought of cruising into a store to buy some Heet or some 151 for my cooking needs makes me giddy.   I'm such a cheap date.