I will come back with info on how it goes with the personal chef. I think they typically cook several meals either in their kitchen or yours for you to heat and eat at your convenience. These are independent contractors, so I expect they’d be willing to accommodate a no-plastic request. I’m not talking someone to fix all our meals everyday. We don’t have Oprah’s money, but hiring a chef is the first thing I’d do if we did!

I have been doing beets and beet greens a bit lately, though only on the weekend (still too much fuss for me on a weeknight). And then I spend the rest of the weekend patting myself on the back. My mother and sister love to cook, but I clearly did not get that gene, alas!

Ok… so veggie prep. I don’t work, but I am a mother of 3 and I homeschool… so it’s a load in and of itself. I find that whenever I buy produce, that if it needs to be prepped… I’m most likely to actually do it when I first get it. So I fill up a pitcher of water for my carrots, run lettuce through my salad spinner and leave everything else that needs to be prepped on my cutting board. Then I chop, slice and dice. Grab some glass jars and voila! all the veggies are ready to be used!

BUT… realistically… I don’t always do that. A lot of the time when I’m cutting something for a meal, I’ll go ahead and do double. :)

Also, for some things– e.g.: for chopping onions, peppers & garlic, grating carrots, slicing zucchini or potatoes–if you have a food processor… it’s a real time saver!!

The upside to buying vegetables that have not been pre-prepped & packaged is that they seem to last much longer. A bag of salad goes slimy within a few days, but a bunch of uncut lettuce lasts until I finish it up. (I just keep in an airtight container with a little water in the bottom.)

And I actually did find a slow cooker via Craigslist. It cost $10. Highly recommend looking for appliances on Craigslist. http://myplasticfreelife.com/2009/02/what-crock/

Or having someone else in the house do the chopping, even if you take care of the rest of the food prep.

I know of someone who hired someone to do some of their cooking via Craigslist. She interviewed and hired someone who does some cooking and she picks it up (and pays them) on Sundays, then reheats and eats for much of the week.

I have heard that leaving vegies cut in the fridge can make them lose nutrients, but I have no idea if it’s true.

Most things don’t really need to be peeled. Carrots, potatoes, parsnips and cucumbers, for example. Others, like pumpkin and beetroot, can be baked or steamed and then peeled afterwards more easily.

I also recommend slow cooking — the casing is plastic, but chances are you can find a secondhand one and they can last a very long time. Getting home to a cooked dinner is a joy. We make lentil and/or bean-based recipes in ours quite a lot.

If you like beets, wash them, cut off the greens (if they came with greens, otherwise just by the roots themselves) and poke with a fork like you would a potato. Wrap in foil and bake at 400 for 45-60 min (ovens vary). Serve with some pasta and your favorite vinegar (I like red wine or balsamic). Soooo good and the beets will basically peel themselves after they bake/steam in the foil. You can flake the peel off with a fork if you don’t like to eat it.

Today I made a cold pasta salad for lunch. While you’re cooking 1 pound of pasta (enough for 4 large meals for my boyfriend and I), add some olives (I buy canned), cucumber (don’t worry about peeling it, tastes fine with the peel on), a green pepper, one or two tomatoes, and maybe an avocado or onion if you don’t mind the spice of the onion. Rinse the pasta in cold water after cooking. The beauty of pasta salad is that it doesn’t have to look good, so you can just coarsely cut the veggies. Serve with oil and vinegar, or any kind of dressing you like. It tastes better the next day too!

Potatoes and yams are also delicious and don’t take much prep work if you bake them. In the winter when it’s cold I love baking potatoes, sauteeing some tempeh (which you can’t really get without plastic unless you make it yourself which is a pain) in olive oil, and making some miso gravy (http://drbenkim.com/miso-gravy-recipe.html) to go with.

Food prep can be a big pain until you find some meals you like and can get good at making. If you really like something, make two times the recipe and save leftovers! Things like casseroles, baked ziti (using tofu ricotta, again plastic packaging unless you can get bulk tofu) are very forgiving about aesthetics and I like the “throw things in a baking dish and forget about it for 30 minutes” method of cooking.

If you can get good bread or rolls (maybe a bakery or farmer’s market has them available in paper bags?), try doing marinated tofu or tempeh sandwiches, with some spinach, tomatoes or onion as a topping. Marinate the tofu/tempeh the night before in some lemon juice, spices, vinegar, whatever you like, then just cook it up real quick to take to lunch or a light dinner.

Feel free to root around my vegan recipe blog for some more ideas, although I haven’t updated it in ages. http://veggietopia.blogspot.com/

Best of luck with whatever you try out!

I bought a bunch of glass pyrex dishes (although, admittedly, their lids are plastic, but we’ve been using them over and over for years) that we use for storing food in the fridge and freezer.

I know you hate food prep but if you just do it all one day a week, it’s not too bad, and then all the produce is all ready for you later in the week when you come home and want an easy dinner.

How does a personal chef work – are they actually cooking for you each day? That seems expensive. If they are cooking in advance, then you run into the storage/plastic issue…

Good luck!

I totally, totally understand the aversion to food prep. I don’t eat nearly enough veggies for that very reason. But I’m hoping that having my own garden will encourage me to eat what I produce.

What if you cut up a bunch of veggies over the weekend and stored them in the refrigerator so when you come home tired, they are already prepared and all you have to do is stir fry them up or something? (This is an idea I just now came up with. I should try it myself.)