Hi Penny,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.
Similar here when we used to camp for a couple of weeks away...I used a electrolux rc1600 fridge, gas, 12 volts and mains electricity
As Snapster said:This is for a fussy child
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" mealsAs 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!
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.)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.
Jes man you eat the hare krishna people, tell me where you camp and ill stay well clear. Fecken Irish next.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…..
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.
I used to love Vesta MealsFWIW, 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 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...........