Food processor, chopper and other kitchen gadgets

redheadmommy

I am so tired of food preparation, and I want to speed up things. Preparing healthy food take soo much time, and in our household we divided the house works such way that I am the only one who does the cooking , packing lunch etc. I calculated that I spend around 15 hrs a week with grocery shopping , cooking, preparing food, packing food etc. It was ok until now when i was staying home with my kids, but now i am back to work and every day this week i was working in the kitchen until 10 pm. i am exhausted and seriously need some gadget to reduce this time.

The most time consuming is to peel, cut, slice , dice and shred stuff. I thought a simple mandoline would be great help, so i bought a zyliss mandoline 2 days ago. That thing is really awesome, except I am clumsy, and I cut myself so badly today. Now I am terrified of mandolins and I need much safer option, when my hand do not need to go anywhere near to a blade.
I saw a couple manual slicer, chopper units like Nicer Dicer plus or Vidalia chopper, or Norpro manual chopper, but they have terrible reviews, everybody complaining that they are flimsy , do not cut properly, break after a few uses etc.
Is there any good one out there? Please share!

The other options is buying a food processor with slicing, shredding and julienne disks. The new kitchenaid pro line unit can dice as well, which is amazing. Except I can not find it in Canada. Generally food processors are pricey, but I do not mind spending on it if it is a great one. Kitchenaid and cuisinarts seem to be the 2 most common brand, but I looked at he reviews on amazon and there is so many complains just about every unit. A 9 cup kitchenaid unit will be on sale at Costco from tomorrow at $99 , but on Costco.ca it has a 2 out 5 star rating, which suggest that it is a useless piece of junk.
People who bought cuisinarts like 20 yrs ago rave about that brand , but most people who bought it in tha last few years are complaining. Plus cuisinarts bowls are not BPA free , which means that not recommended to use on hot stuff.
any suggestion on food processors?

Beside the big machines, I realized that many small tool can help in food prep. I just bought a 3 in 1 avocado cutter, pitter, slicer and it is awesome. As we are eating avocado on daily basis, I can use it a lot.
Anybody have any great small kitchen gadget suggestion to share?

Any other trick helping to cut back on food prep time?

micheleb15

I calculated that I spend around 15 hrs a week with grocery shopping , cooking, preparing food, packing food etc.

I have no idea how this is possible. What are you cooking that takes 15 hours to cut, slice, prepare, etc? I get an hour or so shopping and can possibly understand an hour a day cooking, but what takes up the other 7 hours??

redheadmommy

I have no idea how this is possible. What are you cooking that takes 15 hours to cut, slice, prepare, etc? I get an hour or so shopping and can possibly understand an hour a day cooking, but what takes up the other 7 hours??

I have an 8 months old bay, who i need to make baby food, which I need to send to the day home every day. I have an almost 5 yrs old who just started kindergarden and needs to eat gluten free , which means i need to pack 2 snacks, and a lunch for him every day. Plus my husband only willing to eat sandwich for lunch , for myself I just pack leftovers. Packing 4 different types of lunch for 4 different people , plus making real breakfast leads a 45 minutes time in the kitchen at the morning. For me cooking dinner is 1 hr , or 1 hr 15 minutes. Again as I have a gluten free kid, I often has to make things from scratch that other people just buy in a ready to eat form. This is 1 hr 45 minutes to 2 hrs every single day, which is like 13 hrs a week plus grocery shopping which is at least 2 hr when you hauling 2 small kids with you.

atiana19

My advice as a busy mom as well is to allow one afternoon on the weekends for grocery shopping and veggie prep. All those gadgets are great but you will also have to take the time to clean them after which can be a drag and more mess. If you do most of your separation and prepping on the weekends and store in airtight containers it will be much easier to throw it together during the week. I also recommend if you dont have one already a pressure cooker it cooks chicken and beef in half the time of the oven. Good luck

redheadmommy

My advice as a busy mom as well is to allow one afternoon on the weekends for grocery shopping and veggie prep. All those gadgets are great but you will also have to take the time to clean them after which can be a drag and more mess. If you do most of your separation and prepping on the weekends and store in airtight containers it will be much easier to throw it together during the week. I also recommend if you dont have one already a pressure cooker it cooks chicken and beef in half the time of the oven. Good luck

I never had a pressure cooker, but i started to toy with the idea recently. i want to replace my slow cooker as well, and i saw a few model that is a pressure cooker / slow cooker combo. I think one of those will end up on my Christmas wish list.

Wen it comes to timing of the food prep , I think doing a once a week food prep only worth doing if
A) you have more time on the weekend than weekday and you have to do this way OR
you actually have some gadgets to fast up the food prep. If I cut up the exact same amount of veggies/ fruits with a knife it doesn't matter if I spend 30 minutes cutting veggies every day vs spending 3 hr cutting veggies on a Sunday afternoon. If you have a food processor or other gadget that makes the bulk prep worth it it is a whole different story though