No Electric at All !!!

Penny13

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How do people keep there milk, meat etc cool whilst camping in a tent with no electric at a festival. This is a family member asking us this late last night.
 
How do people keep there milk, meat etc cool whilst camping in a tent with no electric at a festival. This is a family member asking us this late last night.
Hi Penny,
The cheapest option would be to buy a cool box and stop at a supermarket and buy a couple of bags of ice to put in it, 2nd option, if they go camping a lot, would be the same a coolbox and but a portable power bank like this


It's approx £170 so that's cheap if it was for overnight or a weekend.

I hope this helps you
P.S If you went down the coolbox route you need to check the power consumption as you could do with one that is no more than 30 watts per hr.
 
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1. First if all, find some UHT milk that you like and use that.
2. A cool box with ice blocks will work for a day, but I wouldn’t trust meat in there for any longer
3. Consider becoming vegetarian for the duration of the festival
4. Eat out if there are food stalls available.
5. Find out if there is a Hare Krishna presence there and eat for free!

We’ve done all the above a few times…..
 
I used a electrolux rc1600 fridge, gas, 12 volts and mains electricity
 
I used a electrolux rc1600 fridge, gas, 12 volts and mains electricity
Similar here when we used to camp for a couple of weeks away...
Used one of the cheap 2/3 way cool boxes (obviously outside the tent when on gas) and a dumpy calor bottle.....

Frankly for a couple of days at a festival I wouldnt bother....
Buy food there and drink drinks that are palatable when not ice cold.
Or freeze some pop bottles and a cheap cool box
 
As others have mentioned, cool boxes or cool bags are a good idea. However, when I was a youngster and the family had no fridge, we used to keep milk, butter etc. surrounded by towelling that was saturated with water. The evaporating water dropped the temperature of the milk etc. by a few degrees -- enough for it to be usable for a weekend.
A more modern method for ready meals is sous vide and vacuum packing. According to Heston Blumenthal (in a documentary where he tried to improve the lot of submariners) a meal cooked sous vide and then vacuum packed will keep at least as long as the same dish conventionally cooked and then frozen (i.e. months). That said, you'd need to go to a few festivals to make the outlay on a sous vide cooker and vacuum packer value for money!

Edited to add: a bit lateral, but a few 'van life' channels have recently been sponsored by "Y Food" (https://uk.yfood.eu/). I suspect not the most appetising, but just add water to make a smoothie/shake that at least keeps you properly nourished.
 
This is for a fussy child ;)
As Snapster said:

1. First if all, find some UHT milk that you like and use that.
2. A cool box with ice blocks will work for a day, but I wouldn’t trust meat in there for any longer
3. Consider becoming vegetarian for the duration of the festival
4. Eat out if there are food stalls available.
5. Find out if there is a Hare Krishna presence there and eat for free!

6. A clip round the ear'ole and a finger wagging.

:whistle: 😇
 
As others have mentioned, cool boxes or cool bags are a good idea. However, when I was a youngster and the family had no fridge, we used to keep milk, butter etc. surrounded by towelling that was saturated with water. The evaporating water dropped the temperature of the milk etc. by a few degrees -- enough for it to be usable for a weekend.
A more modern method for ready meals is sous vide and vacuum packing. According to Heston Blumenthal (in a documentary where he tried to improve the lot of submariners) a meal cooked sous vide and then vacuum packed will keep at least as long as the same dish conventionally cooked and then frozen (i.e. months). That said, you'd need to go to a few festivals to make the outlay on a sous vide cooker and vacuum packer value for money!
Saucepan with water on a camping stove (Stove + 8 canisters from Go Outdoors = £20) would be perfect for what would really be "boil in the bag" meals :)
Vacuum Machine useful generally for freezing leftover casseroles and the like at home, so prepping meals for festivals would be a bonus.

There are also a lot of ready-prepped vacuum-packed meals you can buy that require just ambient temp storage and either boil in a bag or heat in a frying pan and which would be ideal for tent-camping (just look in the supermarkets for them on the standard shelves rather than the chilled section). I've bought that kind of thing from the extremes of Lidl and Waitrose, so pretty commonly found.
 
Saucepan with water on a camping stove (Stove + 8 canisters from Go Outdoors = £20) would be perfect for what would really be "boil in the bag" meals :)
Vacuum Machine useful generally for freezing leftover casseroles and the like at home, so prepping meals for festivals would be a bonus.

There are also a lot of ready-prepped vacuum-packed meals you can buy that require just ambient temp storage and either boil in a bag or heat in a frying pan and which would be ideal for tent-camping (just look in the supermarkets for them on the standard shelves rather than the chilled section). I've bought that kind of thing from the extremes of Lidl and Waitrose, so pretty commonly found.
FWIW, thinking back to my twenties, I used to do a bit of motorcycle tent camping (touring and rallying). Milk was powdered, used straight out of the tin for tea/coffee and reconstituted the night before for my breakfast cereal. Pretty much all my food was either boil-in-the-bag or dehydrated (think "Vesta", "Batchelor's Savoury Rice", etc.)
 
1. First if all, find some UHT milk that you like and use that.
2. A cool box with ice blocks will work for a day, but I wouldn’t trust meat in there for any longer
3. Consider becoming vegetarian for the duration of the festival
4. Eat out if there are food stalls available.
5. Find out if there is a Hare Krishna presence there and eat for free!

We’ve done all the above a few times…..
Jes man you eat the hare krishna people, tell me where you camp and ill stay well clear. :eek: Fecken Irish next.😂😂😂
 
Hi Penny,
The cheapest option would be to buy a cool box and stop at a supermarket and buy a couple of bags of ice to put in it, 2nd option, if they go camping a lot, would be the same a coolbox and but a portable power bank like this


It's approx £170 so that's cheap if it was for overnight or a weekend.

I hope this helps you
P.S If you went down the coolbox route you need to check the power consumption as you could do with one that is no more than 30 watts per hr.

That looks a great bit of kit. Just been reading the reviews.

I would buy one if I didn't have a couple of similar power banks. I might still buy one as mine don't have AC output.
 
FWIW, thinking back to my twenties, I used to do a bit of motorcycle tent camping (touring and rallying). Milk was powdered, used straight out of the tin for tea/coffee and reconstituted the night before for my breakfast cereal. Pretty much all my food was either boil-in-the-bag or dehydrated (think "Vesta", "Batchelor's Savoury Rice", etc.)
I used to love Vesta Meals :)
Cup-a-Soups are also very handy and take up a lot less room than tins if having to travel small and light.
Ref the tea, something I bought a couple of days ago but not tried yet is Instant White Tea - or more precisely "Instant Black Tea with Whitener" (? maybe due to so many other 'fancy' teas being sold so they need to say what kind of tea it is?). Carnation could also be a good option for milk? Use this for coffee, sometimes for tea and handy as a creamy topping for fruit salad.
 
I find that Couscous is a nice and easy meal for camping.

There are lots of flavoured versions available and you can chuck virtually anything in with it to make it more interesting. I quite like it on it's own though with some hot Chilli sauce.
 
i am a big milk drinker and the thought of powdered milk was a no..no............HOWEVER...had no option once to use powdered milk....on cereals......and to be honest it tasted good......so now alway have some powderec milk when camping........no problems of it going off............
cooler box and ice for other things.....however in really hot weather doesnt last too long...........
 
i am a big milk drinker and the thought of powdered milk was a no..no............HOWEVER...had no option once to use powdered milk....on cereals......and to be honest it tasted good......so now alway have some powderec milk when camping........no problems of it going off............
cooler box and ice for other things.....however in really hot weather doesnt last too long...........

Apparently Nido powdered full cream milk is good.

I bought a big tub of it once but never got to try it as Julie threw it away before I got the chance!
 
Has this person ever been to a festival before.
I've been to lots and I dont remember doing much "camping".
I do remember not feeling at all tired at 6am for some reason or other quite often.
Eating lots of take away dinners and drinking as much alcohol as possible.
That was 30 years ago though so maybe festivals are different now.

One thing to consider, most modern festivals require you to carry all your stuff from the carpark to the camping field so having a heavy coolbox is going to be annoying/difficult to carry along with all the other camping stuff.
 

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