After a week spent wandering the halls of Tales of the Cocktail in July 2008, sipping many finely stirred and shaken libations; I said to myself, "These special cocktails need to be shared with the world." So I bring you Cocktail Hour, a finer way to celebrate the end of the day; with these recipes. They have either been created specifically for Tales of the Cocktail, or re-designed for a new approach on the traditional version by some of the top Mixologists in the world. Many are being presented to the public here for the first time. Enjoy!

Belvedere Earl Grey Fizz cocktail recipe after the jump

Your eyes aren't playing tricks on you folks. That's a pair of Mickey D's Chicken McNuggets in their natural habitat slurping down some barbecue sauce. They're part of the Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill that opened in New York City's West Village earlier this week. Other critters at this decidedly strange pet store include a pair of fish sticks swimming happily around a bowl. There's also a wide selection of hot dogs that behave oddly like snakes as they enjoy the warm rays of heat lamps. There some more conventional pets too, like a rabbit that preens in its cage applying her makeup.

I haven't been to the Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill yet, so I'm not sure what kind of food they serve. It strikes me as kind of cruel to eat chicken nuggets and hot dogs once you realize they're sentient beings. If I were a betting man I'd say the whole operation is a big hoax and that they don't sell any pets or cook anything on a charcoal grill at all. And that's because it is a hoax of sorts. All of the "pets" at the store are actually animatronics designed by the prankster artist Banksy as part of his latest show.

Village Pet Store is located at 89 7th Avenue between West 4th and Bleeker Street and is open from 10 a.m. to midnight until Halloween. Those not in the New York City area can check out the bizarre goings on in this video. I'll leave it up to the critics to decide whether this weird little emporium qualifies as art. At least the dude found an amusing way to repurpose Chicken McNuggets.

[via Wooster Collective]

I'm on the computer waaayy too much, and my wrists are seriously weak as a result. So what's a girl who loves wine to do? I've experimented with plenty of wine openers trying to find one that won't kill my wrists, especially when I run into a bottle with a plastic cork, which is the worst closure anyone could have possibly invented. Please, wineries, just use a screwcap if you can't spring for the real thing. Those of us who don't have the arm strength of Arnold Schwarzenegger in his bodybuilding days thank you.

Now I've found a wine opener that's easy on both my wrists and budget: the Penguin Corkscrew. It's kind of a Rabbit knockoff with a sleeker design, and at $50 it's a little spendy, but much preferable to carpel tunnel surgery. You just raise the lever, put the Penguin on the bottle, pull the lever down and then up, and voila, the cork is out in less than five seconds.

I used to work in a fancy restaurant in college where I had to open bottles perfectly with a waiter's corkscrew, but I'm glad those days are over. Now it's all Penguin, all the time. What's your favorite corkscrew, or do you just wish every bottle had a screwcap?

Ladies and gentlemen, shut down the Michigan borders. A 450 pound pumpkin has gone missing.

Bill Teer of Grand Blanc Township, Michigan, spent five months growing a great pumpkin of Charlie Brown proportions. It was stolen from his yard during the night last Thursday, as his wife discovered when she left for work at 5:30am. He's offering a $200 reward and hopes someone will find it.

"You can't miss the thing," says Teer. No joke!

We're still waiting for a series of ransom notes with a couple of seeds enclosed in each letter. Truly, we wish Mr. and Mrs. Teer luck and hope it's just someone playing a practical joke. Perhaps a giant jack-o-lantern will appear on their doorstep on Halloween!

An Orange Country school board trustee was arrested recently for petty theft when he was caught tucking a bottle of ketchup under his clothes and trying to sneak out of the school cafeteria.

The trustee, Steve Rocco, reportedly wears dark sunglasses and a knit cap all the time. Think unibomber. He also apparently really, really likes ketchup.

APNews says Rocco could face up to 45 days in jail if charges are filed. Now, that's a great way to warn the local kids about stealing from school!

We're actually a little more concerned about his street cred than his potential jail time.

.000001%* of the population will be paid actual cash money to step foot into the on deck circle at Yankee Stadium. Still, that doesn't stop hordes of fans from TiVoing Inside Baseball, poring over box scores and suiting up in team regalia on game day. For some of us, food holds an equally compelling balance of gut-level devotion and wonkish stat-based compulsion. A reservation at elBulli is akin to scoring home team dugout seats for the seventh game of the World Series. Food fans -- here's your program.

It's said that 2,000,000 requests a year come in for just 8000 seats at Ferran Adrià's Spanish temple of molecular gastronomy. The closest many of us will come is grazing through this brand new 528 page play-by-play, A Day at elBulli An insight into the the ideas, methods and creativity of Ferran Adrià. It's not so much the common parlance's "food porn" as it is a post-millennial culinary junkie's process orgy, documenting each staff motion and motivation, every microgram of alginate and liquid nitrogen, and fetishistically breaking down quantity and custom and customer/server semiotics.

The proverbial sausage has never been so obsessively, graphically made for public consumption, and rarely has it been so deliciously presented. There are pleasing pictures and recipes, to be sure (Hazelnut praline air, anyone? Perhaps some Garrapi-nitro pine nuts?), but sans easy access to an Isomalt-R-Us, it's a fever-dream cookbook. It is, however, a deeply heartening food-ifesto.

So. Diet Coke kills sperm on contact. We thought you should know.

We feel sort of shocked, and also sort of remarkably unshocked.

Scientist Deborah Anderson and her team have been awarded one of this year's Ig Nobel Awards from Improbable Research for their work on both Coca Cola Classic and Diet Coke's contraceptive qualities.

Will this knowledge ever come in handy? Well, with a desperate situation and a little yoga, anything is possible. Never say never, right? Okay, yeah, maybe this once.

Other things we bet kill sperm: Jagermeister, Ramen Noodle broth, Tang, and everything at Taco Bell.

Each Friday afternoon (or evening), I offer up eight tasty links that have captured my food curiosity. Here are the links for this week!

1. Forbes Traveler has put together a list of what they consider to be the 11 Classic American Dishes. Included on the list are the Philly cheesesteak, pasta primavera and the overstuffed burrito.
2. Have you ever been challenged by the task of pouring the perfect pint of beer? For their feature, You're Doing it Wrong, Chow has put together a video the details all the nuances of the perfect pour.
3. The Illinois Food Bank has laid down a challenge to the residents of their state: Can you eat on just $25 a week? Citizens took on the challenge and respond. Amy, of Cooking with Amy, recently did a similar challenge and blogged her experience.
4. Elise of Simply Recipes reminds her readers how satisfyingly simple it is to make your own vanilla extract.
5. Just in for our current economic crisis! Depression Cooking with Clara! [via Vegan Lunch Box]
6. The Old Foodie ruminates on the history of toast.
7. Dinner with Julie offers up a recipe for bean-fortified oatmeal cookies.
8. Bacon Today lists ten other bacon sites you should be reading.

• Try Thanksgiving with a flair that includes a recipe for roasted brussels sprouts with sunflower or pumpkin seeds.
  
• Recipe: Red wine, pear, and almond tart
• As the economy slows and the wallets thin, new Vancouver restaurants keep opening while others try to survive without excess.
  
• More on Ferran Adria and his Toronto visit.

It's been just over a week since Marisa mentioned the end of Carol Blymire's French Laundry at Home, and now we've got the final recipe: "Cornets" -- Salmon Tartare with Sweet Red Onion Creme Fraiche. A simple, buttery cone filled with onion creme fraiche and some chopped salmon tartare? It sounds like a nice and delicious end to me, and as Carol describes it, the cornets are "Perfect. Absolutely perfect."

With this, she has done the whole cookbook. The end. But this is one of those times when language fails to adequately describe the power of reality. Think of it this way: Whether we're cooking a Thanksgiving dinner, making a difficult cake, throwing a dinner party, or cooking something beyond our comfort zone, it's ONE meal. The hours from prep to plating fly by, and then we sit down, exhausted and fulfilled. Now imagine that feeling 100 times over, with many intricate and difficult recipes spread out over a couple of years -- all set to a kickass playlist. Carol is the home kitchen's Wonder Woman.

On to Alinea at Home!

After a week spent wandering the halls of Tales of the Cocktail in July 2008, sipping many finely stirred and shaken libations; I said to myself, "These special cocktails need to be shared with the world." So I bring you Cocktail Hour, a finer way to celebrate the end of the day; with these recipes. They have either been created specifically for Tales of the Cocktail, or re-designed for a new approach on the traditional version by some of the top Mixologists in the world. Many are being presented to the public here for the first time. Enjoy!

Chamomile & Lavender Fizz cocktail recipe after the jump

There are few things in life better than a freshly baked cookie. Sugar or chocolate, peanut butter or filled, I like 'em all. And, with Anita Chu's new book, Field Guide to Cookies in hand, I am hard pressed to remember that cookies really should be a sometimes food (that bit of wisdom comes straight from the mouth of the Cookie Monster).

The latest installment in Quirk Book's Field Guide series, this compact little volume isn't short on substance. Written by the blogger behind Dessert First, it contains more than 100 recipes that you can use at every point of the calendar year. In addition to recipes, Anita has included baking notes, cookie history and trivia about a variety of sweet treats.

A few of the recipes I'm looking forward to trying out? There are far more than I can list, but currently, the Nazareth Sugar Cookie (page 83), Nanaimo Bars (page 158) and the Greek Honey Macaroons (page 189) are all shouting my name.

Yesterday, we wrote about the sad fact that after 92 years of production, those familiar pink and white frosted, animal-shaped cookies are going the way of the Hydrox (although since Hydrox cookies are now back, that might not be the most apt comparison). For those of you who have strong feelings of affection for your frosted Circus Animals, you can now get a tee-shirt honoring them.

You see, upon learning yesterday that the cookies were disappearing, Joshua at Cloth Moth decided to design a tee-shirt bearing their likeness, so that even when they vanish from shelves, they'll always be remembered. To sweeten the deal, for the first 20 orders, he's tossing in a complementary 10 ounce bag of the cookies on which the design is based (he ran out last night and cleaned out the store).

Always on the cutting edge of innovation, Google has done it once again, attempting to make drunken emails a thing of the past.

Equally dangerous for making your friends think you are a bad speller or a lush, drunken emails can be especially devilish since, unlike a drunk dial, a drunken email will forever linger in your sent items folder for you to read and re-read. Even worse, they can be embarrassingly forwarded to other friends or your sponsor.

So here's the deal: You enable Mail Goggles in Gmail, you choose the days and times you are most likely to be intoxicated (sorry, no "select all" button) and you choose a difficulty level. Every time you attempt to send an email during your specified hours, you'll be prompted to answer a series of math questions to verify your sobriety. Cool, huh?

Next up, a program to keep you from throwing your computer across the room when you can't figure out what 37 + 19 equals.

[via the Official Gmail Blog]

For your lunchtime pleasure, I'm presenting a series of my favorite bento boxes. Bento are Japanese home-prepared meals served in special boxes, usually eaten for lunch at work or school. These days, bento enthusiasts from all over the world share their creations on Flickr.

As part of a Halloween-themed bento, Lorigami has put nori eyes to five large cooked shrimp, giving the critters a spooky, Jim Henson-gone-bad look. The shrimp appear to be emerging from a brakish pool of pesto like creatures from the deep.