Grub Street

Three Beltway-area bartenders talk about what they listen for when they fill their Boston shakers with liquor and ice and vigorously throttle the sealed contents. It turns out that making better cocktails is sometimes based on sound cues coming from, say, the egg proteins wiggling around in your Ramos gin fizz or the Kold-Draft ice cubes breaking apart like glaciers inside a miniature pisco sour sea. "You find where your rhythm is, and you find your beat," says Buffalo & Bergen owner Gina Chersevani. "Then you know when the drink is ready to go." It's Friday — go get into the groove. [NPR]

The 30 Rock writers gathered at the Food Network's test kitchen for one last communal dinner, where writer John Riggi made butternut squash soup and pasta with truffle cream. The writers wistfully recall all the nasty candy and kale chips that kept their wits aloft over the years. Tina Fey says she has developed a taste for pretzels dipped into Temp Tee cream cheese, which sounds much better than the "old, cold Carmine's meatballs" she used to eat. [Food Network, Earlier]

And the instructions for the hot "Downton Toddy" include stirring "while making snide remarks." The "Argo Bomb" is made with a pint of Iranian lager and a shot of Canadian whisky, while the formidable "Zero Dark Thirty" entails draining ten ounces from the malt liquor of your choosing and topping it off with pitch-black Coke Zero. "This concoction is literally a 'Zero Dark Thirty,'" notes writer-designer Jennifer Lewis, adding that while it has "nothing to do with the movie," it "doubles as a Girls beverage." If your liquor cabinet is stocked, Flavorwire has got you covered for Sunday night's ceremony. [Flavorwire]