Camping cooking for one person at a festival

[erinaceus]

Hi camping mumsnetters,

For the past two summers I volunteered at a music festival. This year I am volunteering at two different festivals a few weeks apart. In past years I didn’t cook at the festival all. I brought shelf stable snacks and bought a hot meal each day from festival vendors. As a volunteer I have access to hot water, tea and coffee, and at one festival toast and spreads as well.

All that eating fast food all week makes me feel grim, so I am thinking of buying a cooking setup. However whatever I bring I have to carry with me on the train and from the festival gate to the campsite. I won’t have access to a fridge.

Do you have any recommendations? What I really miss is fresh food, vegetables and the feeling someone cares. But if I want to cook properly I will need a knife, chopping board and washing up kit and everything seems to get complicated quickly.

When I was a teen on D of E we used Trangias so at least I am familiar with those. From memory a Trangia with a meths stove took forever to cook. In later parts of D of E we used a Trangia with a gas stove adaptor and that made cooking more feasible.

Any hacks or tips for this situation? I do not own any kit so will have to buy it all, I am happy to invest in something that will serve me well and last.

I volunteer at a festival and we are absolutely not allowed gas canisters so I am surprised by this.
I buy the meal vouchers in advance. The cooking in our staff tent is excellent, and varied, and pretty healthy! Do you have that option?

Cous cous is very good!

You can buy those packet of rice that can be added to cooking, there’s ones with lentils. I’d cook some veg off, add one of them and stick and egg in it.

We don’t have a staff tent with meals although we do have a volunteer tent with hot water, tea, coffee, soup and toast.

I did check about the gas canisters and they are permitted at both festivals. I know they are banned at some.

I lead a group of 45 volunteers on a festival site. and whilst I now fully cater for my team I’ve seen lots of volunteer cooking set ups in the past 20 years.

when I used to just be responsible for me I use to make Home cooked and then frozen vegetable based sauces kept in Tupperware, in a a good ice box will last for 4 days. Couscous that needs boiling water and pre cooked rice in packets are also good.
I didn’t want to have to cook from scratch but wnated to eat lots of veg, as it was the bit i sometimes felt missing.

you can also make overnight oats with milk and chia seed. You can prep them in the night before in jam jar. Using milk from your cool box.
you can also buy milk at the camp shop at our festival.

nuts.
and a couple of bags of easy peel satsumas,
dried apricots, and other soft fruits.

a cool box is pretty much essential if you want low effort short cooking times. Freeze milk, water, and the food, and keep it full and shut as much as possible.

I’d take some sachets of cooked quinoa/brown rice/lentils etc or some mixed tinned beans, and some tins of ratatouille with maybe a small pot of dried chilli flakes mixed with garlic granules, oregano, salt and pepper. Then you could bung them all in a single pan on a Trangia or a canister gas burner. No fridge, no chopping and just a spoon and fork needed. Plenty of vitamins, fibre and protein.

https://www.millets.co.uk/15987042/eurohike-eurohike-compact-table-silver-15987042/2013220/?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Shopping&gPromoCode=MILLETS180225&gQT=1 I have a tiny table like this which I put my stove on, they fold up really small and are lightweight. There will likely be other volunteers and someone may already be doing a supermarket run part way through the week. If you can take peppers, cucumber, tomatoes and fruit etc to last a couple of days or so then a supermarket run for extras to last the rest of the week.

Take a cucumber, celery, tomatoes, sugar snap peas - you can eat these raw and they'll be fine out of the fridge for a few days Ditto apples, satsumas etc. No need to cook at all

For the benefit of @MrsMitford3 and anyone else wanting to know the result, I’ve tried this twice now on two camping trips.

In the end I bought a Trangia with a gas burner, and a Trangia kettle. I bought some nice collapsible camping bowls to eat out of and a cutlery set and took a spoon for stirring. I also bought a collapsible washing up bowl (which is great) and took a proper washing up sponge. This latter turned out to be the envy of multiple festival-going teenagers who had neglected to think of this detail (I had a spare which I gave away).

In a way the game changer was buying a gigantic duffel bag with wheels as now I am able to carry everything on the train without trouble.

For meals I found M&S do single-portion tinned meals (chicken in sauce, beef in gravy) so I mixed those with microwave rice and heated it all in one go, or used these meals from Uncle Ben’s. For breakfast I made porridge and put milk powder in it. Aside from this I ate lots of apples, some mini packets of nuts, and a few meals from festival food vendors (after my shifts).

I am surprised how painless it was, I can make a hot drink, cook a meal, eat, wash up and be sat drinking my coffee within an hour which I think is hard to beat, surely? I planned everything so I wasn’t having to cook after a volunteer shift but I think even if I did at least I know what I’m in for now so I could probably manage. I had much more energy during, ate a lot less crap, and feel miles better than I used to at the end of a festival which is a good thing too as I’ve got another one in a couple of weeks.

Thanks to everyone for all tips, I appreciate them all.

Sounds great op. We have a tiny camping gaz hiking stove which you connect to a tiny can. I find apples though are the best, makes you feel so much better! And I carry cereal bars for snacks but buy bacon, haven’t got food poisoning yet! We are on the motorbike so have even less space than you!

Yes - the thing I haven’t tried yet is cooking anything from scratch like eggs or bacon or frying an onion and cooking something up. Seems kind of advanced level to me but who knows? Maybe I’ll graduate to this in due course.

Glad it’s working well for you OP!

Microwave rice is the biz for camping. Ditto straight to wok noodles.

Supermarkets used to sell pouches of potatoes sliced with onion, bacon etc but I haven’t seen those for a while.

Other one pan winners are Tortillas dry fried with a filling of refried beans from a pouch. Add a mashed avocado , cheese slice, onion slice if you fancy it.

Stuffed tortellini from the grocery shelves, with jar sauce. Add tinned tuna if you want. or The M&S small tins of ham are good.

Tin of chilli, bag of tortillas

The M&S chilli is v expensive compared with others but much better (chunks of ‘carne’, not mince)

I wouldn’t generally cook anything from scratch that starts with ‘fry an onion..’ : uses too much gas.