Food suggestions - festival with children

[BeyondUser24601]

Hi :)

Our childcare has fallen through so our annual festival will now be avec children (this may be a disaster waiting to happen...) As it's a festival, we can't take our gas stove - though we do have a camping BBQ.

We'd ideally only like to buy one meal a day, so need some ideas for food that will keep and can either be eaten cold or done on a BBQ.
Oh and will a kettle boil on the BBQ?! Never tried!

Thanks :)

Can you take some of those tiny stoves that use little firelighters?
It's been a while since i went to a festival and i mostly drank boxed wine and ate crisps so not sure if they would be allowed.
If they are then take some to boil the kettle for porridge, noodles, pasta etc

Other than that, maybe peanut butter (if no allergies) and fruit. Cereal/protein bars, bagels and jam/peanut butter/tuna.

www.gooutdoors.co.uk/solid-fuel-stove-p181828

Boiled eggs! If they'll eat them.

I'm at old hand at festivals but i've just had a baby so it will be a new experience taking him this summer. Firelighters take ages to boil water and bbqs don't manage it really. I'd recommend you get something like this: www.outbacktrading.co.uk/product/campingaz-camp-bistro-stove/?gclid=CID4ga7EkNMCFRGNGwodj0UGHw
All the festivals i've been to allow them but its best to check first.

I take uht milk or coffee mate then you can have coffee, just the thing after a late night lol.

If you take a pan you can do tins of chilli, pasta with sauce - great to have something hot if the weather is cold. I also take tins of tuna for sandwiches. Nice mashed up with an avacado. As above, cereal bars are great snacks. Nom.

Which festival are you going to? We've always been allowed a gas stove wherever we go (it's more unusual to be allowed a BBQ)

I take a small portable gas burner like the one Winky has linked to. If you take that and a kettle you can do basic stuff like noodles, pasta, or boil in the bag rice.
We used to cook when we went to festivals but now we've given up, it's too much hassle! We take lots of dry snacks and fruit, and just buy food there.
Pretty much anything everyone else has suggested tends to work.

Sorry my post wasn't actually helpful. I take a small one ring gas stove and just one pan (I have to carry everything!)
I plan on having the main meal from one of the stalls and then I do the following
breakfast: bacon sarnies on the first day (take the bacon frozen and it will defrost overnight) ,
cereal or croissants/pain au chocolat (Lidl do great ones that are individually wrapped, also good for snacks during the day),
my kids don't mind UHT milk so I buy a small carton for each day and open it in the morning for cereal and tea.

Lunch - out at the festival

Supper: (This is where I lower my standards to below any civilised line, but the kids love them) Pot noodles, Batchelors macaroni cheese, Super Noodles, soup - anything that comes in a tin or packet that can be heated easily and the kids will eat basically and preferbly packet as tins tend to be heavier to carry.

Snacks: cereal bars, apples, crisps, breadsticks

I also take vitamins for the kids

I have taken DS to festivals since he was born!

Yes to camping stove, every single festival I have been to actually specified No BBQs, but yes to gas stoves.

I always take tins of things like beans and "meals" in a can like chilli and bolognase. Also packets of things you just add water to.
I take a block of butter and store it in the coolest, darkest part of the tent, but sometimes it only lasts a day or two if it's very hot.
I take hazelnut milk forcoffee as it doesn't seem to go off like other milks.

Our favourite festival breakfast is always veggie sausage and beans in a tin!

Also be aware a lot of festivals don't allow glass, so be aware of taking jars of things!

Also.....lots of salt and pepper.......makes everything in a tin thats normally bland as hell a lot more palatable!!

It's my fifth time there (download) I promise it's no to any gas, yes to BBQs)
downloadfestival.co.uk/information#Campsite

A friend has recommended a Kelly kettle, so we'll be getting one of them, then we can do thing like pot noodles etc easier :)

(Carrying stuff isn't a problem - I'm a wheelchair user so we'll be able to unpack the car on site :) )

With those restrictions I

Sorry.. to continue, I would buy or borrow a trangia. Kelly kettles are great but expensive, a trangia more flexible. You could easily do meals from pouches and sachets etc. Yesterday I was looking at the sachets of potato dishes in Lidl as ideal camping fare.
You can do a lot with one frying pan: we take packets of tortilla wraps and sandwich them together with cheese and toast them in a frying pan: quesadilla!
Loads of breakfast options, packs of brioche rolls, croisssnts (the long life individually wrapped ones). Etc. Individual pots of porridge that just need water.

Thanks soul, I will look at a triangia. :)

Just in Waitrose (waiting for Click and Collect), the Look What We Found pouches of Chilli con Carne are £1-69. Heat up, have with wrap, take a Lidl pack of ready grated cheese, perfect!

I can certainly see why they don't allow gas stoves, they give me nightmares about one tipping over and the whole campsite going up in flames and I always keep mine outside the tent as I'm paranoid about it leaking and killing us! (I admit to having an overactive imagination)

Just talking to my sister, who goes to Download and she said that Bloodstock is the same (we have very different tastes in music!)

We took one of those firelighter cooker things. I can't remember the proper name. It's not the hottest stove ever, but fine for porridge and noodles. We did one meal a day from the stalls. The biggest issue was getting fresh milk, the walk to the shop felt very long first thing.

We are taking our caravan festivalling this year. I know, I know

But quite honestly I don't care

Festivalling without the horrid bits.

BBQ is great for (veggie or meat) sausage, egg or bacon sarnies, burgers, for lunch. Can cook extra for cold snacks. I pack frozen juices/smoothies in a coolbag, they keep stuff cold and defrost over a couple of days or so.

tinkly a few years ago we got a caravan for £60 and took it to Glastonbury. I've never looked back! She's died since then and we now take my OH's army truck and sleep in the back. Still warmer and more comfy than a tent