Any veggies that don't prep well in advance?

[SarrizleP]

I'm at the end of day 16 now and things are going absolutely amazing. I would, however, like to get my cooking a little more streamlined. I know a lot of veggies can be cleaned and chopped in advance, but I'm wondering are there any that don't do well?

For instance, things I would like to have prepped for the whole week:

Bell peppers

Onion

Sweet potato

Zucchini

Carrots

Cauliflower

I know onions stay pretty good after being chopped but what about the rest? And could things like sweet potatoes even be cooked and then placed in the fridge? It would be great to cook 3 or 4 of them to have easily for a few days.

Basically, I would hate to chop all this up, stick it in tupperware, then go to get it in 3 days for a recipe I have planned only to find that it has gone bad. That would suck. But, getting the cutting board out 3 times per day has also been sucking. So.... help please.

[Michaela Elmore Cogswell]

The only one I haven't had pre-cut is zucchini but they should do fine, as do all the others. Sweet Potato should hold fine cooked for a couple days as well. I generally shred a couple for hash browns but don't cook them... they've held fine for a week.

[Tom Denham]

Bell pepper slices keep well. Chopped onion keeps well. I bake 6 sweet potatoes every time I bake them. Sometimes one or two last a week before I eat them. Zucchini might be okay, but that I something I would cut or slice when I needed it. I buy baby cut carrots and just rinse what I need when I cook. No peeling and, for me, no chopping. Cauliflower can be cut down into bite-size florets and kept in an air-tight container for a week. I've never tried it in "riced" form.

I get a lot of fresh greens from a farm on Saturdays and find they keep better if you wash them and cut them into bite-size strips and store them in an air-tight container. I've kept fresh greens like this for almost 10 days without trouble. You want to make sure you don't store them too wet. Sometimes I add a paper towel to the container to soak up water. You can also chop cabbage in advance and keep it for a week in an air-tight container.

[kshacklett]

I've never stored cut up zucchini, but I have been shredding one or two at a time and keeping them in my fridge to mix in with eggs - works fine. If you want to store riced cauliflower, put it into muffin tins, freeze, then take out of the freezer, pop out the little "muffins", and transfer to a plastic bag (to save space in the freezer and get you back your muffin tin)

[SarrizleP]

Great ideas! And I've got the greens down pretty good but it's all these other veggies that are taking up a lot of time and making me get out a new cutting board multiple times per day. I will give zucchini a go and see how it does. Maybe it would do better if I put a paper towel with it, like greens. I store them in plastic bags with a paper towel anyway, when they're whole, so that might be the trick!

[praxisproject]

Water heavy veggies like zucchini will "leak" a little if they're cut up, the juice may make things go soggy, but if you put it in a strainer I think it'd be okay, or make zucchini hash browns or grilled/baked slices and keep those.

Kale keeps well, mushrooms are a bit iffy. I find everything keeps longer not in plastic

[Terez]

I find everything keeps longer not in plastic

What do you keep it in if not in plastic? I'm a fan of ziplock bags for storage because it fits in the fridge so much better than plastic storage containers. But of course, ziplock is still plastic!

Well, thinking about this a moment, I realize that I tend to eat through my food pretty quickly so maybe "keeping longer" isn't an issue...