Something New Is Cooking at Dad Man

Dad Man started with food.

Well, technically, Dad Man started with my son Milo.

He's the one who gave me the name.

What began as a nickname eventually became a business built around something I love doing: feeding people.

I've owned a food truck. Fed displaced fire victims. Catered events. Cooked private dinners. Developed menus. Fed kids. Taught cooking. Prepped a truly unreasonable number of vegetables.

And somewhere along the way, I started thinking about a different problem.

Not how to feed 100 people at a wedding.

How do you help a family feed four people on a Wednesday?

Because professional chefs and busy parents have one thing in common:

Dinner is coming whether you're ready for it or not.

The problem isn't finding recipes

There are millions of recipes online.

Millions.

You could probably spend the rest of your life scrolling through chicken recipes and never reach the bottom.

So I'm not convinced families need another website that simply gives them more things to choose from.

The problem usually happens before the cooking begins.

What are we having?

Do I have the ingredients?

Did we eat chicken yesterday?

Will the kids eat this?

How long will it take?

What am I doing with the other half of this cabbage?

And why, somehow, is everyone asking me what's for dinner?

Every. Single. Day.

That's the problem I want Dad Man to solve.

I'll figure out dinner. You just have to cook it.

That's the idea behind the new Dad Man.

I'm building a growing collection of chef-created recipes designed around the way families actually cook and eat.

But recipes are only the beginning.

I'm also building 52 weeks of family meal plans.

Not diet food.

Not seven elaborate dinners requiring seventeen specialty ingredients and hours of Sunday meal prep.

Actual food.

Food with big flavor.

Food built around whole ingredients.

Food that's approachable enough for a Tuesday but good enough that you actually look forward to eating it.

The Dad Man recipe system will start from a gluten-free, dairy-flexible foundation, while leaving plenty of room for families to adapt meals to the way they eat.

And above all: It still has to WOW the family.

Being nutritious doesn't excuse boring food.

A plan instead of another pile of recipes

The meal plans are being designed to answer more than “What should I cook?”

I want to help answer:

What should I buy?

What can I prep ahead?

Which ingredients can I use twice (or thrice even?) this week?

What should I do with the leftovers?

How can I make this work for a bigger—or smaller—family? Or just single me?

How do I make Thursday easier because I did ten minutes of work on Tuesday?

That's the difference between a collection of recipes and a system.

And eventually, that system will live inside the Dad Man Kitchen Club.

There's more coming too

Dad Man is also becoming a place where we can have bigger conversations about food.

We're going to talk about nutrition.

Whole foods.

Processed foods.

The latest diet everyone on the internet suddenly insists will change your life.

We'll review cookbooks.

We'll test kitchen gear.

We'll turn packaged foods around and actually read what's on the label.

We'll talk about feeding kids, grocery shopping, meal planning and what it means to eat well without making food another source of stress.

And occasionally I'll tell a terrible joke.

Contractually, I believe that's required by the name.

Dinner just got easier.

That's the promise behind everything I'm building.

I don't expect Dad Man to make dinner effortless.

Someone still has to chop the onion.

But I think we can make it a whole lot easier to know what to cook, what to buy and how to get it onto the table.

I'll figure out dinner. You just have to cook it.

The new Dad Man is coming soon.

If you'd like to follow along as I build it, join the Dad Man newsletter. You'll get new recipes, articles, behind-the-scenes previews and first access when the Dad Man Kitchen Club opens.

I've got a lot cooking.

And for once, that's not just a figure of speech.