Meet Chef Spoon: The Story Behind 3112 Meal Prep in Roanoke, VA

Chef Spoon - Roanoke, Virginia

If you follow us on Facebook or Instagram, you've seen me talk about 31 and 12 for years without ever stopping to explain who they are.

I'll post that 31 was in the kitchen helping me today. Or that it's 12's basketball game, so we fed her whole team. The people who know us know exactly who I mean, and I've always liked that it works that way.

So let me introduce them properly.

31	My son Tristan. He's in college now and only home on breaks, and he's a fair bit pickier than his sister, but he'll go through the Chocolate Chip Protein Bites until there aren't any left.

12	My daughter Raygen. She eats more of my meal prep than anyone else in this family, her favorite is the Thai Turkey Lettuce Wraps, and she will absolutely tell me if a batch tastes different from the last one.

Put the two of them together and you get thirty-one twelve, which is where this whole business got its name. Those numbers belonged to my kids long before they belonged to anything I built, and when the time came to put a name on it, using theirs was the only thing that made any sense to me.

Cooking Has Always Felt Like Home

My love for cooking is hard to explain because I don't think it came from one particular moment. It's just always felt right in my soul.

Cooking brings me joy. It brings me peace. It's where my mind settles and everything else gets a little quieter. There's something about being in the kitchen, creating something from scratch and watching it come together, that grounds me in a way very few things do. It's where I feel most like myself.

And somewhere along the way, I realized that something that brings me so much peace could also be how I take care of other people. Food became my way of showing love, celebrating people, bringing them together, and making sure they felt cared for.

That's the heart behind 3112, and it's why our motto has always been simple:

Food is Love, So Enjoy It.

Culinary School in 2012, Then Years in Professional Kitchens

I graduated from culinary school in 2012, and from there, I went to work.

Over the years, my culinary career has taken me through restaurant kitchens as well as institutional food service, including hospitals and schools. Each environment taught me something different. Restaurants taught me the pace, creativity, and precision of the kitchen. Hospitals and schools taught me how to produce food consistently and efficiently on a much larger scale, while working within dietary needs, food safety standards, budgets, and tight production schedules.

That range of experience is a big part of why I can do what I do today.

I learned both.

Starting 3112 Catering Company

I officially started 3112 Catering Company in 2020, but I didn't begin serving the Roanoke community until 2021.

And it didn't start with big weddings or elaborate events. It started much smaller, with me selling dinners on the weekends and giving Roanoke a chance to figure out exactly who Chef Spoon was. One dinner at a time, people tried my food, told somebody else about it, and came back for more.

From those weekend dinners, 3112 began to grow. Catering followed, then weddings, events, personal chef work, and opportunities I couldn't have imagined when I was simply trying to get people to taste my food.

That side of the business has been very good to me. We've picked up a few awards along the way, and somewhere in there, people started calling me Roanoke's number one caterer, which still feels a little strange to write down. We sit at 4.9 stars on Google, and I read every single one of those reviews.

But when I look at what 3112 has become, I still remember that it started with weekend dinners, building a name one plate at a time.

14 Years Cooking

2012 Culinary School

4.9 Google Rating

How 3112 Meal Prep Started

Meal prep wasn't something I suddenly decided to add to the business. It had been in the back of my mind for years and was something I always wanted 3112 to eventually offer.

A lot of that came from my own life as a mom. When my two kids were younger, they were both active in sports, and balancing practices, games, work, home, and everything else that comes with raising a family made it difficult to consistently put something healthy and nutritious on the table. Some days, finding the time to eat well at all felt like its own task on the to-do list.

And even as they got older and became more independent, that struggle didn't completely disappear. Life was still busy. Work was still busy. There were still plenty of days when eating something balanced and nutritious was the first thing to get pushed aside simply because there wasn't enough time.

I knew my family wasn't the only one living that way.

What if I could take the same care I put into my food and make it available for the ordinary days too? Not just weddings, celebrations, and special occasions, but the Tuesday night after practice, the lunch between meetings, or the evening when cooking dinner is simply one more thing you don't have the energy to do.

That's where the idea for 3112 Meal Prep really began.

3112 Meal Prep comes out of the same kitchen as my catering, with the same hands on the food and the same standard behind it. You choose your meals from the current menu, I shop fresh and cook everything from scratch, and it arrives at your door on a Sunday afternoon or a Tuesday evening. You can take five meals or fifteen, and if pickup is easier there's that too.

Feeding Two Athletes Is Why the Menu Looks Like This

Here's the part that shaped my menu more than anything else, and it has nothing to do with market research.

Both of my kids are athletes, and athletes eat. Not snacks and not small plates, but actual food with actual protein in it, several times a day, whether or not their mother has time to cook that day. I built plates for those two for years before I ever built one for a customer, and it's the same thinking behind my Family Packs.

So when you see the numbers on my containers, understand that I didn't arrive at them in a spreadsheet. That's the plate I've been putting in front of my own kids for years, and it turns out a lot of people in Roanoke were looking for exactly the same thing.

What's In Every Container

56g Protein, Up To 550 Calories, Under 24oz Every Portion

What I Mean When I Say Geo Fusion

I call my cooking Geo Fusion, which sounds like a menu term until you eat it. What it really means is that I pull flavors from cuisines all over the world and then build them into something that still works as dinner, with protein, vegetables and a starch in amounts that make sense on a plate.

I build a new menu every two weeks with 10 entrée options on it, so one round might lean Mexican and the next might lean Italian or Cajun or something in between. I do that on purpose. Nobody sticks with eating well for long when they're bored of the food.

How I Cook Your Food

I shop fresh for every single order, and I buy local and seasonal whenever I can get it, partly because it tastes better and partly because I'd rather that money stay here in Roanoke. Nothing comes out of a bag in my kitchen and nothing gets frozen.

That's a harder way to run a business, and I know it. It's also the reason people can taste the difference, so I've never seriously considered doing it another way.

Your meals arrive cold and fully cooked. Two or three minutes and you're eating, and they'll hold in your fridge for three to five days.

Food Is Love Food is Love, So Enjoy It. You'll see that line throughout 3112, and for me, it's more than a slogan. It's the way I cook. I cook with intention every single time I step into a kitchen. Whether I'm preparing a catered dinner for hundreds of people, creating a meal for a family, or packing one meal prep container, I want there to be thought and care behind what I'm serving. I believe you can feel when food has been made with intention. You can taste it in the seasoning, see it in the way the dish comes together, and feel it in the experience of sitting down and enjoying something someone genuinely cared about making. That's what Food is Love means to me. When you eat something I've prepared, I want you to feel the love I put into creating it. It's in every plate, every dish, and every meal that leaves my kitchen. Food is Love, So Enjoy It.

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