Sarah Sherman’s Grub Street Diet

On Saturday Night Live, Sarah Sherman has played a woman covered in singing meatballs, a Jewish Elvis, and — last week — a drunk raccoon ribbing Colin Jost. But for Squirm-heads, she’s in her truest, most delightful form when she’s taking us through her own head: talking about some kind of disarmingly nasty body horror, complete with guttural sounds, clad in her famously bright, patterned, clown-adjacent wardrobe. In her HBO Max comedy special, Sarah Squirm: Live + In the Flesh, she likens oysters and their snotty slime to discharge. “People think I like gross shit, but the reason I do all this gross stuff is because I’m disgusted by it,” she says. “I’m literally disgusted by oysters. The texture is grotesque.” She’d happily trade oysters for her favorite foods-slash-old-lady classics: black licorice and the cereal Grape-Nuts. “I eat like an old Jewish woman in Boca,” she says. “I think I would have done amazing during the Great Depression.” 

Friday, November 28
I wake up at 10 a.m., and like a huge bitch, I force my boyfriend to make coffee at gunpoint (yeah, BOYFRIEND — sorry, ladies!!!). I have two cups before realizing I haven’t had any water, so I fill up a Stanley cup and drink the entire thing in one sitting. I don’t love Stanley cups, but Bowen gave me a Wicked one he got for being in the movie, and if Bowen gives me something, it becomes one of my most prized possessions.

I’m off from SNL and not touring, which is nice because it means I don’t eat like shit 24 hours a day. At work, I eat approximately 85 pounds of chips and Diet Coke every five seconds.

For breakfast, I get experimental with some English-muffin sandwiches with egg, microgreens, spinach, avocado, basil, and cashew paste, all covered in Serrano hot sauce. I eat them incredibly fast. I love a big, green, savory, spicy breakfast. There’s a bunch of leftover green paste in the blender, so I toast some pita and make little pita chips and scrape the remaining green paste out of the blender. Can’t leave a drop to waste!

By noon, I drink approximately 100 more cups of coffee and only realize I’ve had too much once I start feeling a crazy panic attack coming on. Not a capital-P, capital-A Panic Attack, just a small, low-grade Jewish one. I usually have about three to four small Jewish panic attacks a day. I’m starving, so I eat some weird overnight-oats thing I found at a fancy supermarket called Mush that randomly has 15 grams of protein in it. Why are all the girlies addicted to protein all of a sudden? Did everyone become a bodybuilder overnight? What am I missing here?

After the oats, I stare at my computer and write one page of a “script” (meant to write more) and watch hours of a canceled Wes Craven sitcom on YouTube. My friend Martin texts me “Walter’s later?” I’m so happy, because I was sitting around feeling like a loser all day. I chug a bottle of coconut water from Happier Grocery, because I’m a dumb bitch who likes getting tricked into liking fancy shit. I eat, like, two handfuls of dry cereal straight out the box, then head to Walter’s for dinner.

I order my favorite meal: a salad with fries. I’m lactose intolerant, so I can never have an amazingly fun salad, but I like this one a lot because it has celery and fennel in it. My other favorite meal is black licorice, and fennel tastes anise-y, so I’m basically in salad/fries heaven. I surprise myself by ordering a regular Coke, which I decided just now is the most glamorous thing in the world. Drinking a regular Coke at 8 p.m.? What am I … a supermodel? Normally, I’m a Diet Coke addict. I like ordering Diet Cokes for the table. Everyone’s like, “Okay … I didn’t want one,” but they drink it.

I eat all my fries and the rest of Martin’s fries, and when the server asks us if we want dessert, I scream an emphatic “yes!” I love getting dessert at a restaurant more than anything, because it means you can hang out with your friends longer. The problem with being lactose intolerant, besides the diarrhea, is that you can never actually eat dessert at a restaurant.

Tonight, all the desserts at Walter’s are dairy-crazy, so I go home and eat 90,000 Happier Grocery dried-mango slices, watch more YouTube, drink zero water, and go to bed.

Saturday, November 29
I wake up at 9 a.m. and immediately make a weird Ka’Chava smoothie with too many scoops of almond butter and frozen blueberries. Please, God, tell me these are healthy. I haven’t really looked into what’s healthy about it, and I don’t know what my body needs. I just know that I’m trying to fill myself up because I have a busy day. Obviously, I always overcorrect on this and end up making myself sick by drinking a smoothie that’s basically the equivalent of eating an entire Thanksgiving dinner.

I make a big pot of coffee, and I chug as much of that and water as humanly possible. I pour another cup of coffee into the glass bottle that had the coconut water from yesterday. I sit on the train chugging my glass-bottle coffee for 45 minutes and feel like I’m about to explode. No one on earth has ever been full of this much liquid.

I go to the TMJ doctor, who tells me I’m “not beyond help,” which I take as a cause for celebration, and I treat myself to another coffee from the Daily Provisions across the street. I also grab some avocado toast to go. I love their avocado toast! Sue me!

Then, at around noon, I run to my photo shoot (celebrity supermodel lifestyle!), where I inhale the avocado toast. I make sure my breath doesn’t smell like shit so that I’m not breathing hot-avocado mouth all over my friend Nina, who is doing my makeup.

A little later, we beg one of the guys running the photo shoot to run out and grab us pastries, and he comes back with a bag of bagels and croissants. I eat a sesame challah, and it’s honestly better than birthday cake.

By 5 p.m., I have about 2.5 seconds between the photo shoot and recording an episode of the podcast Chapo Trap House. I grab a tofu-vermicelli noodle bowl from a nearby Vietnamese place and eat it by unhinging my jaw and swallowing it whole, like a snake gulping down a rat.

I do the podcast while chugging Coke Zero. It’s fun, and they’re really making me laugh. That’s the New York City girlie’s life Carrie Bradshaw could only dream of!

Afterward, my best friend, Ruby, and I hang out and talk shit for five hours. I head home at midnight and eat a bowl of Cocojune coconut yogurt with sunflower-maple cereal. As someone who hasn’t been able to have a drop of dairy in years, Cocojune tastes insanely amazing to me. It tastes like heaven on earth. I can’t even believe I’m allowed to eat it.

I stopped eating dairy five years ago because it occurred to me that I’ve had diarrhea my whole life and I maybe should think about whether it was something I was eating. I went to a gastroenterologist, and he was like, “Well, your life is stressful,” and I was like, “Fuck you.” He was like, “Maybe you should cut out coffee,” and I was like, “No.” But I cut out dairy and I feel better.

Sunday, November 30
I wake up at the crack of ass to take the train to Long Island to visit my parents. My parents are awesome and crazy and loud, even though they think they’re not. I get a coffee from my local coffee shop, and once I get to Penn Station, I think, Well, look at all these coffee shops. Might as well get more coffee. I get a black iced Americano because for some reason I feel like that’s not like drinking two coffees. I also throw in a GoMacro bar.

The second I get off the LIRR, we get bagels from Ace Bagels on Northern Boulevard. It’s this new bagel place that is run by a guy my dad says he’s best friends with. There’s always a new guy with a new deli that my dad is best friends with.

I lived in a bagel house growing up. We’d get a dozen bagels for the week, slice them, and freeze them. You’d have a bagel with cream cheese in the morning, and then you’d have a bagel with tuna-fish salad or something for lunch. At dinner, you’d eat whatever dinner was, and then for dessert, you’d have a bagel with jelly. A bagel three times a day.

At Ace, I get a sunflower-seed flat with dairy-free cream cheese (sad). It was the best fucking bagel I’ve ever had. Maybe this place will become a new favorite. COVID destroyed a lot of my favorite places growing up, but there’s this place that’s still around that I love called Kensington Deli. You can get a pastrami on rye with mustard and a knish and a pickle. It looks straight out of 1961, and it’s my favorite place to go on Long Island. I don’t go this trip, but maybe next time.

For dinner, my family and I get sushi. Everyone gets these, like, big, crazy dragon-roll cream-cheese sashimi whatever. But I’m addicted to avocado rolls. Marcello [Hernandez] and I will order avocado rolls before the live show because it’s not going to turn left on you. It’s not going to betray you! I get avocado rolls with a bunch of pork gyoza, and at some point, my dad is like, “Can I get one of your smoji?” We were like, “What?” It took a good minute to realize he meant my gyoza. He’s a Long Island guy, and he couldn’t quite wrap his mouth around gyoza, and the word “smoji” came out. It was an earnest attempt! Bless his heart.

I take the LIRR home. When I get back, I eat my favorite dessert, which is Grape-Nuts cereal and almond milk. My grandma would always eat Grape-Nuts growing up, and I just loved it. I like how it’s salty and sweet and really crunchy. It’s so hard it feels like it’s breaking your teeth, but then it softens up with the milk. It’s the perfect food to me. Is that crazy? Does any young person eat Grape-Nuts?

Monday, December 1
I wake up feeling like crap, so I call out of work. I spend the day in bed dying and groaning and complaining. I muster the energy to make electrolyte-powder drinks, and I drink a hundred of these throughout the day, until I’m convinced I can basically pee out all the virus.

My ideal food when I’m sick is boiling-hot matzo-ball soup or udon soup. Something I can drink boiling hot, because I’m trying to boil the sickness out of my body, which is something I invented. I get udon soup from Raku and bean curd for lunch. It’s healing, even though I don’t love getting takeout. I get creeped out thinking about all the hands that are touching all my shit.

I’m not good at cooking. I don’t have an evolved palate. But it’s nice to feed yourself. When I make food at home, I make a lot of salads and stupid green mush. I love really, really crunchy lettuce. I don’t care that white lettuce isn’t good for you. And I mix in other crap, like pistachios, olives, pomegranate seeds, fried chicken, red peppers, pickled onions. Just, like, shit that doesn’t go together. I’ll chop up a hard-boiled egg and act like it’s cheese. I’m addicted to cucumbers and celery and crunchy chili oil that I put on everything. I’ll make a really mustardy vinaigrette that has way more mustard than it should, as if it’s a hot dog.

Not today. My head is in a fog, so I order Thai food and call it a night.

At the very least, the sickness isn’t dairy induced. One time, I was doing an hour of stand-up in Chicago maybe three years ago. It was after I had cut out dairy, and I was eating a burrito right before the show, and the burrito had a little bit of cheese in it. And halfway through my hour, I’m just, like, sweating. I thought I was going to puke and shit at the same time. So much of my hour is making weird, gross gagging sounds, and I was like, Oh, I’m actually gonna throw up. I had to run offstage ten minutes early.

Tuesday, December 2
It’s writing night at work, so y’all know I’m about to be treating my body like a dumpster. I wake up at 9 and drag my ass out of bed to go to therapy. I do feel better, which makes me think I actually did boil out the germs. It’s cold outside, but I still drink iced coffee.

After therapy, I make a pot of coffee and put it in a glass “to-go” bottle again. I probably shouldn’t put hot coffee in that. I have, like, nine phone calls before work, so I take a car. Big mistake. I need to pee because of the hundred cups of coffee, but we’re stuck in traffic!!

Once I get to 30 Rock, I get a giant bagel from Daily Provisions with an egg on it. No cheese. A sad life. My cortisol levels always spike because I’m anxious about writing good sketches, which means I’m starving all day in a way where my body is a bottomless black hole.

Once I’m at work, I eat my bagel. I’m offered coffee, so I take another iced black coffee … I have to be up late writing, okay?! I also eat handfuls of candy, because there are bowls of candy all around 30 Rock: tiny Twix, Hi-Chews, those minty Life Savers.

I also keep black licorice in my bag. I like all kinds of black licorice, but I’ve been carrying around the French kind that tastes like medicine. They’re these minty black-licorice shards, and they make my stomach feel better. It feels like a very old Jewish thing. In addition to bowls of candy, there are also little bags of chips everywhere. I’m always snacking on those when I’m working. I grab a bag of Baked Lays. Yeah, Baked Lays. Sue me!!!

Today, there’s also a spread of Cuban food out, and whenever there’s a buffet, my shame flies out the window. I don’t ladle food. I shovel it onto my plate. I try to make the most colorful plate as humanely possible. I pile it high with rice, beans, vegan empanadas, chicken, and sauce. I go crazy with it. There’s salad too. I love dumping a cold salad near hot food, so I do that.

A typical writing night at work means staying at work until 2 a.m. and eating like shit. If I don’t get Thai food, I like getting spicy Sichuan chicken from Blue Willow. Spicy food keeps me up. Tonight, it’s Thai. I always order from a different place in midtown, hoping it’ll be the one, but it never is. I get pad Thai and fake-cheese vegan curry puffs, and they’re good. They remind me of Cheetos Puffs, which I love more than anything, but I can’t eat shit I like anymore. Being Jewish and in your 30s is sad.

At midnight, there’s always McDonald’s in the office. They put out a spread, like when Trump orders hamburgers for the White House. I usually try not to eat it because I picture all the fucking writers at work just rubbing it with their little slimy, little poop hands, touching all the fries. But tonight I do.

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