Brown butter cod with zucchini, lemon, and capers

And my favorite road trip snacks and tips

This one-pan brown butter cod will make you feel so fancy. There’s something sophisticated about seafood, even more so when there’s brown butter involved, and even triply so when the seafood dish can be described with a fancy Italian word like “piccata.”

That’s the case here: a summery cod piccata of sorts. It feels elevated but is ridiculously simple, as fish dishes tend to be.

We enjoyed it as Sunday dinner over the weekend and it required just the right amount of effort I was able to muster that day, just as a dust storm was rolling in and my husband and I were frantically trying to prevent pool floats and loose watering cans and my dead potted plants from blowing away. There was lots of excitement watching yard debris being tossed around, not so much about the idea of making dinner.

When cooked right, cod is flaky, tender, and mild in flavor, which makes it ideal for those who prefer a non-fishy fish. You’ll coat the cod fillets in a simple seasoning, then sear them in butter, which eventually browns and is arguably the best part of the meal. Capers and fresh garlic and lemon juice and moon-shaped slices of zucchini all come into play to make this sort of like a light, summery spin on traditional piccata.

This dish packs between 35-40 grams of protein per serving with only 3 grams of net carbs.

The recipe is below for my lovely paid subscribers, along with a printable PDF, recipe notes/substitutions, and nutritional info.

If you like this recipe, you might also enjoy my Pan-Seared Halibut with Brown Butter or my Mediterranean Cod with Tomatoes, Olives, and Feta.

---

What else would be helpful?

Whether you’re a free or paid subscriber, I wanted to take a minute to thank you for being here. After creating food content for years, whether it’s blogging or video or photography and reels, Substack is refreshing. Lately I’ve been using the app more and subscribing to other newsletters and I get the sense that other longtime food creators feel the same. It feels like a place where I can write my own rules for what I want this newsletter to be. The freedom in that is exciting.

So with that said, what do you want this newsletter to be?

I’m planning a lot of bonus content for paid subscribers, including expert interviews and other tid bits like fun recipe series and holiday treats. Today, a bonus for subscribers is a rundown of how we road trip and the healthy snacks I like to pack.

But before I get to that, could you please tell me what kind of recipes you would like to see more of?

The snacks I pack for family road trips

My kids are going back to school in a week and a half (HOWWW) and so summer break is sadly winding down for us. But I realize there’s still a good number of you who have at least a month more of summer to enjoy and with Labor Day weekend also being a busy travel time, I wanted to share my best tips for bringing food and snacks on road trips, along with a list of items I like to pack.

Our last road trip was a short-ish one, from the Phoenix area to San Diego last month, which included a few days at an Airbnb in San Diego before a couple of nights at Legoland. We’ve made the drive to California countless times (in fact, we used to drive to Santa Monica every two months for Ian to see a neuro-oncologist there) and my kids are the kids who request snacks right as we’re pulling out of the driveway.

Our family at Legoland and San Diego last month.

Since I go all-out with snacks, I usually give myself a break and plan on a lunch (or dinner) stop at some point on the drive.

Here are a few tips for traveling, along with a full list of the healthy snacks I like to pack for our family: two older kids under 10, a baby, a mostly-keto husband and the extra snack-y side of me which comes out in full force on any sort of road trip, beach day, pool day, etc.

My top 7 tips for healthy road trip snacking