Get Preppy

Raid the produce section and get prep work out of the way by chopping all of your veggies at once.

• Store them in plastic baggies or plastic containers in the fridge, so when you're ready to blanch, sauté, bake, broil or mash, they'll be at the ready. You can save even more time by relying on kitchen wizard gadgetry. "I just bought a Slap Chop, which saves time slicing vegetables," says Sara Press, regional sales manager for a digital marketing company.

• Set aside any chopped vegetables you want to eat raw (perhaps as part of a midday snack) and steam the rest. "The idea is that you make some kind of a [vegetable] base, and you can eat a little bit of it each day and mix and match it with your meals," says Mari Suzuki, cooking optimization expert and author of "Kitchen Wizard Flexipes™: Simple Time-Saving Secrets for Tasty Global Cuisine."

• One batch of steamed potatoes, for example, can be made into a salad on day one, mashed potatoes on day two and potato soup on day three. "You've already done the majority of the work [by steaming], so you can save a lot more time later in the week," she says.

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