The Sweet Part of the Weekend

The Friday Newsletter is in search of the perfect point of the week

I’ve been looking forward to the weekend all week.

I suppose this is not unusual. As a great writer once said: “everybody’s workin’ for the weekend / everybody wants a new romance”. I believe it was Wordsworth, or perhaps Keats? I’ll have to look it up. Nevertheless.

After a long slog of a workweek—and, I don’t know about your week so far, but mine has resembled Andy Dufresne’s escape from Shawshank both in duration and smell—the weekend offers a glorious respite, one for which we should thank both the 19th-century industrial laborers who first fought to make it a reality, and Daniel Craig for officially launching each Friday.

I got to thinking the other day, though—what’s the best time of the weekend? They’re not all created equal, and though any one of them beats to hell 11am on a Tuesday, what’s the perfect hour?

I’d like to hear your thoughts, of course—

—but I have a few contenders myself.

5pm Friday

This one is obvious; it’s the moment the weekend begins for many of us, the moment responsibilities and stresses and pants can be hurled aside. A vast sea of weekend lies ahead of you; the possibilities are endless.

10pm Friday

I will have big ambitions for getting a hot start to the weekend, and each weekend I will order takeout, drink 3/4 of a craft beer, and fall asleep on the couch watching reruns of Bob’s Burgers. Nothing about this should be construed as a complaint.

9am-12pm Saturday

Sliding scale on this one, depending on if you have kids, but let’s just call this “when you get up on Saturday”. Big breakfast. Hot coffee. College GameDay. Very solid.

8pm Saturday

Date night!

9am Sunday

This is fundamentally different from 9am Saturday because it is when CBS Sunday Morning, the most gentle and relentlessly on-brand program on television, airs. Each week’s stories will be like, “The Origins of the Paperclip”, “A Weekend With Andi MacDowell” and “Searching For Wild Onions In Yellowstone”. I adore this show.

These are all great options, to be sure.

But my top vote-getter? The ACB-endorsed Best Hour of the Weekend (and, thus, Best Hour of the Week)?

4pm Saturday.

You’ve had time to decompress from the work week, assuming you work a traditional schedule. You’ve had a good night’s sleep, perhaps run some morning errands or done some yardwork already. The kids are off playing outside or in their rooms or something—they’re quiet, that’s what matters—and a big pot of something good is simmering away on the stovetop, ready for dinner in a few hours. It’s as appropriate a time for a hot cup of coffee as it is a nice, cold beer. The Sunday Scaries are still a day away. It is the summit of the weekend. At 4pm Saturday, you are invincible.

Friends? The weekend is upon us; welcome home.

7) It’s all in my head / I’m thinkin’ ‘bout makin’ some chili again

I’ve indulged a bit lately. Now, lately could mean “2018-present”, but in the more specific sense, I’ve had a gluttonous several weeks. I smoked a brisket on Halloween, and I’ve been sneaking my children’s candy ever since. Last weekend, I joined old friends in Cincinnati for the Bearcats’ homecoming, and filled myself with college favorites like Thai food, pizza and lots of beer. Oh, and I made a fried chili football.

Thanksgiving looms in the near future, and it feels like maybe—just maybe—I could stand to take a week off from smoking meats, deep-frying things, and succumbing to my most hedonistic culinary vices.

At the same time, though… it’s fall! This is the best food season of the year! It’s soup season! Stew season! Chili season. There are no bye weeks, not during chili season.

I decided to make a compromise, without compromising flavor.

I set out to make chili—something I love making and eating, and take great pride in doing well—but I’d make it entirely vegan.

I wanted to make a rich, hearty chili like I always do; last year’s decidedly non-vegan chorizo-and-sausage-based recipe (along with many readers’ recipes) can be found in this post, “The Democracy of Chili”, from last fall. This time, though, I’d eschew the usual five pound of fatty meats that I often put in, but I’d also avoid using processed meat substitutes¹ as a crutch.

It’d still have to be meaty, in the stick-to-your-ribs thick sense; I don’t like thin, watery chilis to begin with, and I don’t want a bunch of chopped vegetables and beans floating in tomato soup. I want something to stand up to the darkness and gloom of standard time.

And you know what? I pulled it off.

Let’s talk about how.