- Here is the easiest meal I will make all day.
(playful music) Oh.
Canned cat food, yum.
Hi, I'm Erica Adler, and I am a professional meal prepper.
Not only do I meal prep for myself a good amount,
I also meal prep for other people for money in their homes.
I am also a culinary student
and I have a few side hustles because I'm a millennial.
Kicking my day off as a professional meal prepper
by walking to the grocery store
to pick up some groceries for a client.
I always do my list on my phone
and divide by produce, protein, and then just pantry items,
so that just helps me stay organized in the store.
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Reusable bags or bust.
A few things happen every single time
I get to a client's house.
Hair goes up obviously,
you don't wanna get that in the food,
hands get washed, and then the last thing,
I'm gonna check in the oven, yeah.
So before I turn the oven on,
I always double check to make sure
there's nothing in there so there are no mishaps.
I have set up my little work station,
which is something I do at the start of every session.
I have my cutting board, my knife,
which I always bring from home with me.
Yes, I carry a 10-inch knife around in my backpack
with me almost at all times.
I also have a waste bowl.
This just makes it easier to discard of scraps
rather than kneeling down to the garbage can
after every time, and then under the cutting board,
I actually bring, let's see if I can pick this up.
I bright this little piece of drawer liner with me.
You can also put a little bit of wet paper towel
and that really stabilizes the cutting board
and prevents injuries, which is important.
What I do before each session is also
kind of write out an order of operations,
and I actually list them and then I reorder them
so that I am always roasting something,
having something on the stove,
and chopping at the same time.
Because for professional meal prep,
it's all about being efficient with your time,
getting in and out of the client's house
as quickly as possible, and in order to do that,
you gotta be multitasking, and the first thing
I'm gonna do is roast the spaghetti squash.
Most people I see roasting a spaghetti squash
cut it kind of lenghtwise like this
and they end up with two long halves,
but if you cut it the other way,
which is what I'm gonna do,
and you end up with these kind of two stout halves,
you can see the spaghetti squash actually runs
around the rim of the squash,
and so you end up with nice long spaghetti noodles
rather than kind of like short little noodles.
This is a service that's meant to help make people
feel better first and foremost.
My goal is to feed people nourishing food.
I've had clients where there were literally
no plates or bowls in their cupboard before I started
cooking for them and that's because they were
ordering delivery for every single meal.
There are certain things that I really like for meal prep
and it's because they either reheat really nicely
or they don't require reheating.
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Now I'm doing what I think is the most fun part,
which is photographing kind of the creation.
I think it's fun to just document and take a picture
and I usually post it to Instagram.
I'm back in the kitchen to do my favorite part,
my least favorite part, which is all of the cleanup.
This is something that most personal and private chefs
still do for themselves is all the dishes for their clients.
Gotta love a client with a little compost bin.
This makes my scrap saving so worthwhile.
I'm gonna need two hands to do this though.
Since most of my clients are not home when I am cooking,
I like to leave a cute little note at the end
of the session just letting them know that
everything went well and if there are any groceries
that I need to be reimbursed for, all that fun stuff,
just like a finishing touch to put an end to the session.
Also one of the perks of the job,
she left me some beautiful flowers to take home, very sweet.
I am headed out, I've got flowers in tow, but also trash.
Always take the client's trash out, you gotta do it.
My favorite part of coming home, hi.
I knew that I was gonna be ravenous when I got home,
so I did a little tiny meal prep for myself last night.
Obviously it's not as aesthetically pleasing
as what I do for clients,
but I think that that's not as big of a deal
if you are coming home to eat deliciious food.
Now that I have had my lunch,
I feel like my afternoon can actually start.
I'm gonna start doing my menu planning for clients
for next week, so the way that it works is
I will plan a menu a week in advance
of when I'll see a client and then
I send it over to the client and they have the ability to
say "yes looks great" or "let's swap this for that"
or make whatever adjustments they feel necessary.
Hi Charlie.
I have clients that eat in a paleo style,
a pescatarian client, kosher clients.
I've had young single people,
but I've also had families with young kids.
I've also cooked for families for holidays.
I'm obviously appreciative that it is something that
people are willing to pay for.
Okay I'm back in the grocery store
for the second time today, but that's nothing.
I think that my record for daily trips is like four or five.
I'm happy to be here amongst the produce.
I think thing having a beautiful, composed meal
in your refrigerator that's ready to go
and is visually pleasing is nice and I really enjoy
being able to provide that service to people,
but I think that if you can find 30 minutes here and there
to just make larger quantities, you're meal prepping.
Doesn't always to have be perfect and pretty,
it can also just be what you can get to.
This is pretty much the end of my day.
I'm gonna sit down and eat dinner, watch some television.
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