"cocktail hour" news and stories

Photo: Heath Fradkoff

Been seduced by "Mad Men" yet? Have Frankie Valli on repeat on the Hi-Fi? Find yourself buying dusty vintage TV trays decorated with mallards? Drinking a gin martini, up, for dinner?

OK, we're projecting. Half the Slashfood staff is enamored with the show (see New York Magazine's handy primer) that is about to plunge into its third hard-drinking, heavy-philandering, Gotham-glamorizing season this Sunday. We are over the moon about the style, the cocktail culture, and those insane retro recipes.

It's the perfect excuse for a cocktail party (especially a costumed one), so bust out the pearls and heat up the curlers -- or grab the fedora and tiepin -- because it's totally OK to drink with friends on a Sunday night. No one batted a heavily lined eye at such a thing back in the day.

Our party primer, with tune selections, deviled eggs and LeNell's perfect martini, after the jump.

One of my favorite traditions is the cocktail hour. It's not so much about starting a night of boozing early, but delighting in a drink or two -- savoring crisp flavor as a bookmark between the finished workday and the on-coming evening. It's an excellent end to the 9-5 grind that doesn't get much love these days, save for the myriad of old folks down in Florida and Jonathan M. Forester's tasty Cocktail Hour series here at Slashfood. But could the cocktail hour once again gain momentum?

The Toronto Star has posed this very question as money woes and governmental bailouts trickle into every area of news. Basically -- as financial stress increases, so does alcohol consumption, which is why illegal homebrews became so prevalent as the Great Depression hit during the end of Prohibition. A boozing lifestyle really isn't the way to go when life stress descends, but perhaps this can reinvigorate a more wide-spread appreciation for alcohol -- not as a tool merely for pub crawls and nightly debauchery, but for an appreciation of taste and a calming moment between work life and real life that goes beyond the high walls of so-called alcohol snobbery.

In a world where finances are in crisis, workdays often blend into worknights, and connection is often maintained through computers rather than oral communication, maybe it's time to make that break, end the day with a great cocktail, and try to relax and reconnect! Who's with me?