Cheap and easy camping meals please.

[AstridPeth]

Help please. We are going to be camping at a festival for a week in a couple of weeks. There will be 8 of us (2 adults, 3 teens, 2 pre teens and an 8 year old). We only have a non electrical cool box but iceblox can be swapped in reguarly for frozen ones. We have a 2 burner stove for cooking. No fancy camping equipment so quite basic. There is a Tesco literally 2 minutes walk from the festival site so I can pop there daily if needed.
Has anyone got any cheap and cheerful meal suggestions for me please?
Thank you.

Our problem when camping is getting enough fruit and veg so i always try to have something like tinned peaches and custard and take bananas as they travel best. I'd go sausage, beans and scrambled eggs one day as it's so easy and you have two burners so doable.

I'd try and take two meals with me. One fridge for first day and frozen for the second. Something like a beef stew (with potatoes in) or a bolognese (cook pasta there) would work well the first night. Veg chilli, make it before you go, freeze and let it defrost in the cool bag, serve with tortillas/rice.

Any left over tortillas and quesadillas are a good option, you can add tomato and onion and even though they need to be done one at a time that's fine.

I find snacks brutally expensive at festivals so we always take cereal bars/individual biscuit packs and chocolate (we freeze it before we go and we've never had problems)

I think your main challenge will be quantities as the pans won't be huge so you may need to do two servings of most meals? So I'd probably add pot noodles or the like so a couple of meals are just boiling water! Looking forward to hearing other ideas.

A camping toastie maker is worth the investment for snacks/lunches, just heat over a gas stove flame ..got ours from Amazon
Couple of loaves of bread , cheese, ham etc~ easy for everyone to make their own

Ranch Eggs is always a staple for us too as it all cooks in one pan ~ serve with some crusty bread
Second the suggestion taking homemade batches of chilli frozen (we have done same with curry and meatballs too ) ..helps keep your cool box cool and saves a lot of faffing !

You can pre bake potatoes and they last for a good three days kept cool. Easy to then make jackets and beans, or scrambled eggs, or corned beef hash, potato cakes, fried wedges etc.

Omelettes

Frozen batch cooked meals in the bottom of the cool bags are a god send. As are a frozen bag of peas and chopped onions - can be added to lots of things and serve to help keep the cool bag cool.

I made the other night...a tray of med veg mixed with stir in sauce and chicken (I forgot chicken so had to used brockhurst whixh actually worked well) put in a tinfoil parcel and straight on fire. Was really good. For desert parcels made with frozen summer fruits and crumble mix straight on fire too.

Camp toasties can be made in a pan. Put a slice of bread in a pan (butter side down optional) put these or any other toasty filling in. Top with another slice. Tip over after a minute or so.

Baked potato is good. As said above cook at home. And heat on the fire in foil about an hour before you need them. Wrap in a fleece blanket until they are warm through.

Risotto , chilli, curry, pasta sauces all work well & can be bulked out with pasta or rice. Just press make the spice mixes or pastes and pop in a jar. While you are at it make a good quantity of garlic herb butter - good for vegetable, seafood, fish or red meat on a BBQ.

Porridge if you have someone to do the washing up.

If you want to impress - make a crumble topping before you go and make foil crumble with any old fruit you come by.

I hate predictive text.

Aldi do fabulous packet risotto I've just discovered. Mushroom and garlic extremely scrummy.

Anything with rice or pasta is easy but the problem is cooking for so many people with only the two rings.
Good old bangers and mash is easy enough if you use packet mash (Mr Mash is a good one we found) because you can do a big bowl of it so everyone can get served together. Same principle for cous cous.

If Tesco is that close it gives you more options as you could get some salad without worrying about it going off, also things that can be eaten straight away like cornish pasties. If the weather is cold do a couple of pots of stew and dumplings. Buy some tins of stew and just heat through in a pan (of course you might want to make your own and take with you but you did say cheap and cheerful).

The toastie makers are good but we find it takes a while to get everyone served as you have to take turns. Or you could do pancakes. You can cook enough bacon in one go for sarnies for breakfast.

One of our easiest meals is to stir fry strips of beef with onions, peppers, mushrooms, sauce etc and then put it in tortilla wraps to eat. No cutlery to wash up and minimal cooking equipment used!

Oh tortillas, good thinking! . My son has ASD and we've always been so limited with what we could cook on holiday as he refused to eat most 'easy' stuff like rice/pasta/stews. Now he's getting much more adventurous and does actually eat the tortilla wraps with stir fry veg at home, I still haven't got used to the possibilities for when we are away .