The Drink That Changed My Evenings

I Finally Fixed Cocktail Hour

At the end of a long day, I can now make myself a drink without the hard stuff and not feel bored or boring. This is perhaps overstating what can reasonably be expected from a beverage, but only slightly.

Inspired by a reader’s recommendation, I’ve been drinking my new concoction at cocktail hour for the last few days, and I think I may have finally cracked something I’ve been trying to figure out for ages: how to keep the fun of cocktail hour while giving my liver the night off.

I want to turn up the music. I want to dance in the kitchen while making dinner. I want to feel a little more glamorous and a little less interested in whether anyone has left a wet bathing suit on the floor.

I want cocktail hour to change the mood.

I just don’t want it to change tomorrow morning.

And after a few evenings of rigorous field research, I seem to have landed on a tonic that is actually a tonic: fun tonight, creative whirlwind tomorrow.

In case you missed 32 Things That Make Life Feel Easier, one of the things on the list was:

Occasionally replace cocktail hour with something equally ceremonial.

This is a habit I’ve been trying to acquire—for all the reasons.

The trouble with removing an alcoholic drink at the end of the day is that you’re not merely removing the drink. You’re removing the little trumpet fanfare announcing:

The Day Is Over.

Dinner may not be ready. There may be an email you really should answer. But ice has gone into a glass, a lemon has been sliced, the music is on, and you can exhale.

So if you’re going to take away the alcohol—and that little buzz—I think you have to replace the ceremony.

And the drink better be good.

I want something with enough going on that at five o’clock I think: Ooh, I get to have one of those.

And I have finally found it.

Actually, I’ve become sufficiently obsessed that I now have a whole coastal cocktail-hour repertoire: drinks that can swing both ways for a crowd, an excellent Clamato Mary, homemade syrups, two special children’s drinks my eleven-year-old insisted I include, something involving beach plums that is decidedly not alcohol-free, an ice machine currently making its way to my house, and, obviously, something salty to eat with all of it.

But first:

The drink that changed my life.