Soul Snacks 🏖️

2 minute read

Dear Snackers,

For years, while my son was sick, travel was not possible for us—in other words, the blessing of this freedom is not lost on me. Since he’s been healthy, we have been lucky enough to get away and, truly, up until this last trip, each one has left an imprint on my heart. Our trips are usually full of precious moments that bring me to tears: watching my kids help each other apply sunscreen, clinking a glass with my husband, and eating sandwiches with chips together on a beach. We’ve never done anything especially luxurious, we’ve just had a great time being together as a family. Mike’s job is so demanding that we rarely have time to just “be” together and so, no matter where we go, it’s special—staycations included.  

Yes, traveling with kids is exhausting, and yes, I completely annihilated my foot on an inflatable obstacle course (it is likely a Lisfranc injury which can take 4-12 months to heal and may require surgery…I’ll find out more next week) but neither of those things are what left me feeling so “blah” after our recent trip. I don’t like admitting this—it feels bratty and obtuse to complain about family travel, and yet, I just didn’t have a great time, and I think this is why: I’m burnt the fuck out…and so is my husband. Lately, we have both been grinding the shit out of life. For my husband, it’s getting up before 5am to pound the pavement through Times Square and be at his desk for close to 12 hours/day. When he is able to get out of work earlier, it’s to run home to coach our kids, or get more work done, or put laundry away—things of that nature. For me, it’s the usual never-ending weight of the mental load of running our house and caretaking for our three kids, while maintaining space for my work—I know pretty much everyone reading this fully gets it. I go to bed each night with a mile-long-to-do list for the next day, my house and my brain feel constantly cluttered and, being such a busy time in our lives with so much responsibility, it made going away feel kind of like adding more dirty dishes to the sink instead of emptying the dishwasher. We would come back from the pool and pick up our phones to check things of our to-do lists. With all the crap we were trying to accomplish in our “down time”, it kind of felt like we spent a lot of money to put on sunscreen, tell the kids to stop fighting, and figure out what to do for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Fucking dinner follows you everywhere. 

Feeling so wound up got me thinking about a phase of my life a while back when I was in a really rough spot emotionally during Calum’s treatment. I was at a breaking point…and then Faye came down with a terrible virus that landed her in urgent care in the middle of the night because she was having trouble breathing. Faye getting sick took my attention away from feeling sorry for myself and shifted my focus to her. Once she got better, I was so grateful to be back to my “normal” level of stress. My point is, sometimes when life is weighing you down, your blessings are revealed in the form of a setback—something like a kid getting really sick, or completely fucking up your ability to walk. Hurting my foot has forced me to step back and think about what’s important–not the humdrum of my to-do list, but the fact that at least this is just my foot, and at least my kids are healthy.

Although this will be hard on me, it will, quite literally, remind me that baby steps are sometimes the only way to move forward. My approach needs an adjustment—I can take a deep breath and look at my responsibilities simply as the tasks that they are, rather than emergencies or catastrophes—a pile of unread mail and a corner full of boxes is not the end of the world. Take a deep breath, Caitlin. Slow it down, Caitlin. It’s not that serious, Caitlin. From now on, any trip we take where no one gets seriously injured will be amazing, regardless of my to-do list. 

-Caitlin

• EAT: How many times have you wondered if eating raw cookie dough would kill you? Well now you can eat it until you’re blue in the face…Doich (pronounced “Doy-ch”) is a brand new “snacking dough” that is made without dairy and absolutely fucking delicious—bonus: you can bake it, too. We have tried every flavor in my house—the chocolate chip and fudge brownie are my favorites. It also has better-for-you ingredients, which is always a priority for me. A must-try in my opinion!

• LISTEN: A playlist for when you fuck up your foot and you need to access beast mode.

• MAKE: People keep asking me for that chicken recipe I made earlier this week. Here it is and this is what I actually did:

  • Marinate boneless skinless chicken thighs in dill pickle juice and Greek yogurt (I used yogurt instead of the mayo she used in the recipe). I probably used close to a cup of Greek yogurt and a cup and a half of pickle juice maybe and I had two packs of boneless skinless chicken thighs, so maybe a little more than 2lbs. I wanted leftovers. 

  • I think you’re supposed to marinate them between 30mins-2hrs but I did it for about 15 minutes.

  • The next step was to coat the thighs in flour – this was kind of weird because they were so wet, but I did it anyway. I sprinkled some garlic powder into the flour. 

  • Put them on a baking sheet on parchment paper and did a quick spray of oil on each. I put the oven up to 450 and cooked two sheets of chicken thighs for like 30 to 35 minutes and did the last few minutes under a broil until they looked crispy. 

  • I served it with rice and sautéed snow peas mixed with baby bok choy in a little bit of sesame oil, salt and pepper. It was fucking delicious.