‘Late Show’ Writer Kate Sidley’s Grub Street Diet

“This is my first experience where everyone in my life knows I lost my job,” says Kate Sidley, who has been a writer on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert since its second season. Last week’s announcement that the show would end in 2026 shocked her as it had anyone else, and a week earlier, she hadn’t been thinking about it at all: She was instead getting ready for a trip with high-school friends and preparing for the August publication of her first book, How to Be a Saint: An Extremely Weird and Mildly Sacrilegious History of the Catholic Church’s Biggest Names, inspired in part by her experiences with those same high-school friends. “We went to an all-girls Catholic school,” Sidley says. “That’s why we’re so close — and so messed up.” As for the show, she says she’s approaching it like any other news story: “We’re going to do what we always do, which is try to process it with as many jokes as we can.” And the future? “With the state of media and the state of television, it feels insane to me to try to anticipate anything,” she says, laughing. “I’m looking at it the only way that I can, which is Today I have a job, tomorrow I have a job, and isn’t that lovely?”

Wednesday, July 9
I wake up with my alarm, by which I mean my 4-year-old daughter wearing a unicorn nightgown and a tiara. It’s a cute way to wake up, but she unfortunately has no snooze button. I get out of bed, make breakfast for her and her brother (he’s almost 2 and thankfully sleeps in later than his sister), and get in some cuddles before my husband takes them to day care. Normally, this is when I’d leave for work at The Late Show, but we’re on hiatus this week, so I get to see the kids off while still in my PJs.

Breakfast for me is overnight oats with a banana. My doctor told me I have high cholesterol, so instead of taking medication, I’ve started eating oatmeal more often. My husband brings me a coffee from Fiesta Mexican Kitchen, a food truck by our apartment. In my opinion, this is the best coffee in our neighborhood. Sure, I could’ve made coffee at home, but I deserve a treat for single-handedly solving my cholesterol issue.

After breakfast, I put some chili in the slow cooker and start packing. I’m heading out of town for the weekend for my annual girls’ trip with five friends I went to high school with. We were incredibly close as teenagers and even through college, but when we got into our 20s, people started getting married, having kids, and building careers. Finding time to get together during the holidays became impossible. So we established the girls’ trip. Every year, one person does the planning (a job we have dubbed Sir Plans-a-Lot), and we pick a new state to visit. That way, when we’re little old ladies, we’ll have seen the whole country together. So far, we’ve been to places like Georgia, New Jersey, Indiana, Tennessee, Vermont, and Utah. This year’s trip is to Boise, Idaho. Since I’m not Sir Plans-a-Lot this time, all I have to do is pack a bag, show up, and be ready to find out how they party in Boise (with potatoes, I assume).

The chili isn’t ready by lunchtime, so I have half a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie instead. After that, I pack a bunch of snacks for my trip because if there’s one piece of wisdom I can pass along as a parent of two, it’s this: EAT BEFORE YOU’RE HUNGRY. This especially applies while traveling. When you’re hungry, inconveniences become problems, and problems become crises. Think you might want a sandwich in an hour? Have an apple now. I promise this is always a good idea. I stuff my carry-on with granola bars and Goldfish crackers (yes, I still eat like a toddler even when not traveling with my toddler) and packets of Liquid I.V. because Vicky (who is Sir Plans-a-Lot and a scientist) warned us that it’s easy to get dehydrated in dry, high-altitude environments. I am not a scientist, so I pack 20 Liquid I.V. packets. You can’t have too many electrolytes (actually, you probably can — I have no idea). By this time, the chili is ready, so I eat lunch No. 2.

For dinner, we have a Clean Out the Fridge Night. I make leftover ravioli, chicken, and sweet potatoes for the kids. There is just enough for the two of them, so my husband and I order from a local Japanese restaurant called Sapps. Okay, fine, technically Clean Out the Fridge Night is actually “give the kids whatever’s left in the fridge while Mommy and Daddy order a fancy dinner” night. I have steak teriyaki, and Joe has salmon teriyaki. Everybody’s fed and happy.

The dinner table is covered in junk from my packing, so we eat in front of the TV while watching Curious George. This time, George takes a robot to the beach (weird choice, but he’s a monkey) and loses it in the sand. To find it, George and the Man with the Yellow Hat build a metal detector out of a radio and a calculator. My daughter wants to know if that really works. I say “yes,” even though I don’t know, because I believe George wouldn’t lie to me. Like I said, I’m not a scientist.

After the kids are tucked in, my husband and I settle in with our nightly ritual: replaying The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom on the new Nintendo Switch. I binge-eat Trader Joe’s milk-chocolate peanut-butter cups in bed while we do this because sometimes as an adult you really do get to live your childhood dreams.

Thursday, July 10
I am woken up by my phone alarm at 4 a.m., which is not at all cute. I silently eat my overnight oats standing over the sink in the dark kitchen, then head to the airport insanely early because it turns out there aren’t a ton of daily flights to Boise, Idaho.

A fun fact about me is that I’m a bad flier. I once screamed on a plane. There was significant turbulence, so a lot of people screamed, but I SCREAMED. I screamed so hard that people turned and looked at me with faces that said, That scream was about more than the turbulence. I have also thrown up on planes. A lot. Because of that, I try to eat very mild food on flight days.

At La Guardia, I have a plain bagel with butter. I decide to hold off on coffee because I’m worried it will be too rough on my stomach. This is a mistake. The first flight is to Denver, and it should’ve been four hours. It ended up being five because we had to turn around the second before takeoff due to a medical emergency on the plane. The guy walked off by himself and looked in good spirits, which is wonderful for him but kind of a letdown for the rest of the plane. For a delay that long, you want something amazing — a baby being born in Economy Plus.

Due to the delay, I have to run through the Denver airport to make my connection to Boise. I stop at whatever place has the shortest line, which means I end up with a cold brew and a chicken-pesto flatbread sandwich. I chug the coffee before boarding (also a mistake), then sit on the plane and eat the wettest sandwich ever made. I feel very sorry for the man sitting next to me who has to witness me eating a dripping pile of pesto out of a paper bag like a shameful gremlin.

After landing in Boise, I eat a banana that yesterday-me had wisely tossed in my carry-on while my friends pick up our rental cars for the weekend. We stop at a fantastic sandwich shop called Lemon Tree. I have the Turkey Boursin Sandwich, side salad, and a lemonade. Everything is so delicious that we just sit and eat in silence (silence is rare for us). It’s over 90 degrees, and on a hot day nothing hits like a good sandwich and a lemonade. Way better than a wet sandwich on a plane.

Due to the time difference, my body thinks that the sandwich is dinner. But it is not! Once we get to our vacation cabin (which is way farther out of the city than we realized), we make another dinner. And by we, I mean Vicky. She makes her Boursin pasta which we request on every trip because it’s so delicious (yes, that means I had two Boursin meals in a row — it’s vacation!). The pasta is fantastic. Food always tastes better when it’s made by someone else.

Friday, July 11
My favorite part about these vacations is waking up slowly and having a coffee with my friends. Laura always makes the coffee, and here’s the thing about Laura’s coffee: It’s jet fuel. I don’t know what she does, and I don’t want to, because if I made myself coffee like this regularly, my heart would explode out of my chest. She could submit this coffee to the FDA for approval as a colonoscopy prep. Laura’s coffee isn’t a beverage; it’s a weapon. I have two cups.

After slowly eating a breakfast of bagels and scrambled eggs, we head out to the World Center for Birds of Prey. Despite being very different women with very different lives, we are all deep down big ol’ nerds, so we enjoy seeking out vacation activities where we get to do stuff like learn about condors. We stay for the bird show, where we see a barred owl eat mice (pre-dead). It is extremely cool and a good reminder that it’s lunchtime.

We head back into Boise to a restaurant called Fork, where we attempt to eat every appetizer on the menu (the asparagus fries are amazing). I inhale a big fat prime-rib sandwich, which tastes great but is exactly the wrong thing to eat before our next activity: a bike ride through the 90-plus-degree heat. Thankfully, we rent e-bikes. The more competitive members of the group take the lead, while Lauren and I happily bring up the rear with our own style of “biking,” which involves entirely relying on the throttle. If every activity had a battery-powered “assist” option, I would be way more sporty.

Even with zero pedaling, it’s an insanely hot day to be outside, so we stop at a lemonade stand run by a brother and sister named Halle and Charlie. They claim to have the world’s best lemonade, and they do. Plus their new puppy, Maximillian, is more than willing to accept our petting and snuggles while we polish off our Solo cups of lemonade. Lemonade is good, but lemonade with a puppy is truly a treat.

Since the drive back to the cabin will take more than an hour, we stop at the Westside Drive In for ice cream. I get an ice-cream potato, which is, as advertised, ice cream in the shape of a baked potato. It’s alarmingly realistic. At this point, I’m so overheated I’m torn over whether I should eat it or just shove it in my bra to cool my body down. I should’ve mixed it with the Liquid I.V.

The e-bikes are so fun that we lose track of time and have to throw together a quick dinner at the cabin. We go with a salad made by Lauren (her secret ingredient is everything-bagel seasoning — it’s a game changer) and frozen pizzas heated up by yours truly (my main contribution to the cooking). We eat in exhausted near silence because it turns out that while we still feel like teenagers when we’re together, our bodies disagree.

Saturday, July 12
I start off today the same as yesterday: scrambled eggs, bagels, and several cups of Laura’s murder coffee. In a rare moment of learning from our mistakes, we decide to take today easy and stick close to the cabin. After breakfast, we head into the nearby and fantastically named town of Crouch. We pop into some cute shops, drink some more lemonade, and dip our toes in the river to cool off. We step out when Lauren sees a snake. Then we head back to the house to snack on chips and queso and leftover frozen pizza from the night before while playing board games.

It’s fun to sightsee on these trips, but the real joy is afternoons like this. Nobody knows you like your childhood friends. From the ages of 13 to 18, we were inseparable, so now when we’re together, we all kind of become those kids again. Parents pass on, the house you grew up in gets sold — hell, even our high school closed down. In a way, we’re the last keepers of each other’s childhoods. It’s not lost on me how lucky I am to have this group of friends. We’ve been together for 30 years, and we’ll stay that way until Laura’s coffee kills us.

For dinner, we make fajitas, but we pronounce the word like vagina so we can joke about what we’re stuffing in our fajitas.

Sunday, July 13
Travel day. I love these vacations, but I hate being away from my family, and I’m pumped to get home. We get up at the ungodly time of 3:45 a.m. so we can be on the road by 4:15. I have the first flight of the day: 7 a.m. On the drive through the pitch darkness, we snack on what was left in the fridge: dry bagels and grapes. At the airport, I give hugs and grab a quick coffee before hopping on my first flight.

Thankfully, the first flight is smooth, and I get into Denver in plenty of time to go enjoy my two-and-a-half-hour layover at the United Club. I snack on the breakfast bar and have another coffee. I am champing at the bit to get home and see my husband and kids, and unfortunately I have to keep champin’ because my flight gets delayed twice. I fill my now-five-and-a-half-hour layover by getting some mediocre tacos and some sort of coconut-covered date ball that looks healthy but sadly also tastes healthy.

I finally land in New York at 8 p.m. I’m starving, and I’ve missed the chance to see my kids before bedtime anyway, so I stop in the airport to grab a Wendy’s cheeseburger for dinner. I eat only half of it because at this point I’m more tired than hungry. I get home by 9 p.m. I shower and snuggle up with my husband, who shows me videos and photos from the weekend. I get up to speed on their adventures. I share mine. We sneak into the kids’ bedroom to peek at them. They are passed out after a big fun weekend, just like kids should be.

Monday, July 14
My daughter doesn’t wake me up today, which is weird. I go into the living room and find that she is unsuccessfully hiding in her princess tent in the corner. The tent is giggling, which is the key giveaway. She pops out and yells, “SURPRISE, MOMMY!” I scoop her up for a hug, which isn’t easy considering she’s almost 5 and I’m absolutely pooped.

I make her breakfast and give her presents from Idaho: a colorful bracelet and a stuffed-osprey toy from the World Center for Birds of Prey. It makes realistic bird sounds, which is supercool but also probably not what I should have given her to play with at 6:30 a.m. My husband wakes up to the sound of an osprey in the living room.

On my way to work, I stop at a food truck called Rollin Bagels. Everybody in New York needs to be a regular somewhere, and for me it’s here. I walk up, wave hi, and they make my order (a whole-wheat bagel with cream cheese — boring, I know). I get coffee at work and drink it with my bagel while reading the news of the day and writing my pitches. I try to avoid the news while I’m on vacation to give my soul a break, so the first day back is always a rough reentry to reality. I click on a news story about Pete Hegseth having to remove a Metallica song from an official DoD drone video and take an enormous swig of coffee.

After a morning of pitching and writing, I get lunch from Sweetgreen: the miso-salmon protein plate. Since my diet the day before consisted mostly of bread in different forms, I figure some fish and vegetables is a wise idea. It’s a relatively light afternoon at work, which is good because the day of travel yesterday is catching up with me.

I rush home like I always do to maximize the amount of family time we get before the kids go to bed. My husband breaks the news to me that “the TV isn’t working” (wink-wink), so we have dinner on the balcony. There isn’t much in the kitchen, so I whip up some “blue box” (Kraft mac ’n’ cheese, for the uninitiated) and peas. We’re out of milk, so I substitute half-and-half, and let me tell you: This is the ingredient that has been missing from my life. The next time you make blue box, use half-and-half. You’ll thank me. Then you’ll probably take a nap.

We stay on the balcony until the rain rolls in. It’s a big storm — scary enough that my typically wild son wants to be held the whole time while side-eyeing the rain. He calms down when he gets his gift from Idaho: a toy peregrine falcon that makes realistic bird sounds. He and my daughter have a blast making their birds talk to each other. Our apartment sounds like an aviary. It’s good to be back in the nest.

See All