(photo credit: Michael Rochin)

Now that that’s out of the way. I LOVE to cook for my family.

Since I was young I’ve always enjoyed cooking. It’s watching something come together from individual ingredients in its raw form to something totally different and wonderful that really excites me. When I was in High School I almost made a decision to attend culinary school, but decided in some form or another to eventually enter a career in IT.

However my passion for cooking and creating my own dishes has never went away and I’ve been a home cook ever since. I love cooking for people and knowing that they enjoy my food, the best compliment to me is seeing a clean plate. Its been a personal goal of mine to share my recipes with others but I needed there to be a strong motivation for me to do this and there wasn’t one until we had our son.

Family’s who sit down to eat together every night:

Growing up we always gathered at the dinner table at ate dinner almost every night, enjoying Mom’s cooking, or Dad’s barbecue. Now that I’m a father I see the importance of having that same routine and I want to instill that in my kids by not making it a chore, but something they look forward too by giving them great food to eat!

Unfortunately with all the distractions of life in today’s world, this isn’t the way most kids will grow up these days as 50% of my generation (Gen Y, millennial, echo boomers, whatever you want to call us) 23% of families sit down at the table to eat every night. 

I have made it my mission as a father to make sure my family is part of that 23% and to encourage other fathers and parents alike to help raise this statistic through creating this website. 

My mission for this site is to get dads who may or may not know how to cook, to give mom a night off in the kitchen, and make it fun to come back to the table by enjoying great food! By creating easy to following step-by-step recipes, as well as blog posts to give you ideas on putting together your own meals, getting the children involved, and tips and tricks, I challenge you to get in the kitchen, become the Dad With A Pan in your family and get the family back to the table for dinner!

(photo credit: Michael Rochin)

-Derek