Hi, I’m Evan, the Dad Man behind the recipes.
I’m a cook, school chef, and a dad in the beautiful Rogue Valley of Southern Oregon. Dad Man Can Cook started with one idea: dinner should be easy, without giving up real food or bold flavor.
My kitchen background comes from feeding a lot of people. But really starts as a child making homemade tortillas with my mom or German pancakes with my grandmother.
When the pandemic ended a 15-year translation career and closed my escape-room business in 2020, I started cooking free meals for friends & neighbors in need. That grew into
renting a commercial kitchen, running a food cart, and later a ten-month stint preparing meals for families displaced by the Almeda Fire.
These days I oversee an award-winning nutrition program at a public Waldorf charter school. I worked with the government to establish the scratch-cooking program and now I write the menus and standardized recipes. Winning over a cafeteria full of kids is great training for cooking for a busy family: the food has to be simple, familiar and actually taste good.
Before food, I spent nearly twenty years as a writer, editor and translator. That’s why I write recipes the way I do: clear steps, consistent measurements, and no surprises halfway through dinner.
Everything I cook is gluten-free by default. Even not being gluten-free myself, I just find its the easiest way to cook to avoid having to make multiple versions of everything.
Most recipes also come with swaps for dairy-free, vegetarian, vegan, pescetarian, nut-free, egg-free or soy-free kitchens. I use whole foods, and advocate for organic and local ingredients when the budget allows. I’m also curious about herbalism, foraging and traditional foodways, and you’ll see that show up in the recipes.