The Weekend Reset: A seasonal stew, a terrific whodunnit, & a mid winter pick me up.

It’s Friday. Looking for something to switch up your weekend, or to give you an excuse to relax a little? That’s what the Weekend Reset is for. Each week contributor Tim Johnstone pulls together five things to get your weekend started. Could be something to read or watch, something to eat or listen to, or even something to do. Enjoy the weekend fellas.

 

EAT: A hearty, easy winter fisherman stew.

I always appreciate it when Joe recommends a recipe. And this one is really suited to this time of year.  The folks at MyFitnessPal have a good track record of providing tasty, healthy meals and this is one of them. Here’s what Joe had to say about it.

Mrs. Dappered really liked it. I was worried that I perhaps didn’t get the fish cooked right, but the cod ended up being flaky and tender. One word of warning: like most recipes, this takes longer than they say it does. Took me almost 90 minutes. And I had to use a lot of cutting boards. Also, make sure your leeks are clean. Dirt can hide in the many layers. I had to wash and rewash the leeks to rid them of some sand.

While there are a good number of ingredients for this recipe, many of them are pantry staples and the rest are easily found at most markets.

 

READ: Brilliant new Bowie graphic novel.

BOWIE: Stardust, Rayguns, & Moonage Daydreams is simply fantastic. A love letter to one of rock’s true artistic icons. It focuses on his early days, his first attempt at finding his voice and his transition to the wildly popular Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars period. I’ll be forever grateful to my cousin for introducing his music to me as a wee lad. It was kind of mind-blowing to be honest. I mean, it was a big change from John Denver. Be nice.

 

PLAN: That very large professional sporting competition thing is in a week. Plan your party now.

Hosting a party for the ginormous football game (we all know what I’m talking about but can’t specifically mention) is a challenge that can seem daunting. It shouldn’t. It just helps to have a plan. And some good advice. I think there are some really good points in this article that I am on board with. One of the benefits of having a group of friends over is that it forces you to take care of a couple things that you have had on a list for a while. I have a broken towel hanger in my bathroom and I have absolutely ZERO home improvement/basic homeowner skills. But I’m having my annual party this year and so this will need to be fixed. Basically, it’s a good chance to make any changes you’ve been thinking about for your gathering spaces. One point I would add to the recommendations made in that link is this: make it as easy as you can for your guests to help keep things from getting out of control by providing obvious places for trash and recycling. Photo above by Tim Cooper on Unsplash.

 

BOOKMARK: Because sometimes you just need a mental pick-me-up.

Sometimes the only thing you can do is look at smiling dogs on Reddit. Like, for hours on end. It’s legit therapy. As the bumper sticker says: wag more, bark less.

 

WATCH: Bond as Hercule Poirot by way of the American South.

Many of us are getting quite used to having everything delivered and streamed right to our doorstep or right inside the walls of our carefully curated caves. Yet sometimes you have to go out of your comfort zone. Like going to a movie in an actual movie theater! Because that’s the only way you can see this particular film at the moment. The cast is filled with some of my favorite actors – Toni Collette, Daniel Craig, Michael Shannon, Jamie Lee Curtis and Christopher Plummer among others. The reviews have been fantastic (it has a 97 score on Rotten Tomatoes). I didn’t realize how much I needed this movie until I saw the trailer.

Tim Johnstone is Dappered’s music correspondent as well as our resident gatherer of all things interwebs related. He’s pretty sure about some of the things most of the time, but totally clueless about everything else all the time. But he is convinced that this is some Inception-level shenanigans happening here. Also, somebody should suffer for this monstrosity.