Camping virgin now a camping first timer - and some questions for all you veterans

[puddle]

So we went camping this weekend and it was totally fab. Went to the new forest, beautiful site, very peaceful, camped amidst the tress and my two adored it. Bat spotting last night with my ds, woken up by ponies nudging our tent.

We're going again in a couple of weeks and I wanted to ask:

• what do you eat? We barely ate any veggies (v unlike us)and I ended up eating bought pasta sauces (which I NEVER buy at home) but cooking seemed a bit daunting.
• how do you store your food? I was watching all the wildlife in the twilight around our tent - there was a LOT of animalness going on even discounting the ponies. I ended up moving all the food etc to the boot of the car which seemed a bit un-campingy.

We usually don't eat veggies on camping trips either, but I bought a fridge this year and it is fab. However our usual fare is

Pasta and sauce - jar of sauce, extra sausages or something added to dh and kids (I am vegetarian)
'Yellow' rice - eg savoury rice and something (hot dogs usually!!) It is the only time I do this, but kids love it, I often throw extra sweetcorn (canned) in for extra veggies
Fish and chips takeaway
Fried chicken legs, one pan with chicken legs, olive oil, herbs, salt and pepper.
etc
In france with the new fridge I could do far more, but we still did our usuals

Sallystrawberry - top tips re freezing milk, sausages and bacon!

Puddle - we would cook a lot of pasta and buy ready prepared veg to throw in when cooking. Otherwise, our only veggies were mushrooms in the bacon sandwiches that dh made for breakfast.

Eat 5 portions of fruit a day if you can't do veggies... And definitely second the cool box for storing food. Though we've never gone away for more than 3 nights, by which time food is starting to get a bit past it's best!

Our veg consumption goes down a little camping too, just cos of the extra faff involved in prep and cooking etc...we drink fruit juice and ds still has lots of fruit for deserts etc. We eat barbecued meat and pasta most nights! Have had paella in the past though! Can do meat and veg kebabs (red peppers, red onions etc) on a bbq - yum! DH has been known to resort to using Dolmio pasta sauces when camping which are normally spurned as the work of the devil!!! It's a holiday..not the tiem to spend extra time chopping and reducing etcetc...

We used to use an old wicker picnic basket for storing food in...you could buy one of those plastic tubs with lids...

Our kids call tined food 'camping food' (all those things like beans with disgusting sausages in them and tinned ravioli etc) because that's what we eat when camping. They don't know that anyone eats them at any other time and just assume that sainsbury's have a very large camping section!

Although not so nice tinned fruit and veg does last for ever and saves a lot of peeling and washing time.

oh, the basket was for stuff like pasta...perishable stuff went in a cool box...then we got electric hook up and a fridge...

Urgh, just remembered that dh loves tinned potatoes, carrots etc for camping. Bleurgh.

We have a smallish very thick coolbox which is good for keeping dairy things fresh, but also a huge chest one which makes a great larder for store-cupboard things.

Ah, good to hear you all resort to tins. I think next time I will take sally's advice and cook something beforehand and then freeze to take.

Also use some of the kids storage boxes to take food in (were very unorganised and went to supermarket en route so everything was in plastic bags). We have a biggish coolbag - could do with a much bigger coolbox but as usual are spending money like water over the summer hols so will have to wait.

We are not meat eaters so don't have the meat storage issues thankfully.

This is our giant one (it mostly gets used when I'm defrosting the freezer) It only seems to be sold in 2 places online though and it's out of stock at both atm.