There is a solution and it’s easy… To create an order progress log, simply create a new instance of Logger and pass it a File instance for your own logfile.
Create a new model which inherits from Logger

class OrderProgressLogger < Logger
  def format_message(severity, timestamp, progname, msg)
  "#{timestamp.to_formatted_s(:db)} #{severity} #{msg}\n"
  end
end

Create initializer called logs.rb in RAILS_ROOT/config/initializers with the following content:

order_progress_logfile = File.open("#{RAILS_ROOT}/log/order_progress.log", 'a')
order_progress_logfile.sync = true
ORDER_PROGRESS_LOG = OrderProcessLogger.new(order_progress_logfile)

After a restart of your mongrel or passenger ORDER_PROGRESS_LOG will be available through out your application.
You log to it just as you would DEFAULT_RAILS_LOGGER like so…

ORDER_PROGRESS_LOG.debug "Starting order placement method"
ORDER_PROGRESS_LOG.error "Could not create order record"