Stocking the pantry

At other festivals we scope out the schedule times to find what days we can get back to camp vs what days the music is too good and we need to bring portable food. My crew and I have done it all from basic to off the hook elaborate (this years allgood we made crepes with lobster salad shred lettuce diced toms and smuggled them in for our best fest meal ever....we have a goal of bringing live lobster in a cooler one day and cook em up at camp and smuggle the whole things in with bibs and butter and claw crackers and throw down a tablecloth and go freaky formal amongst the Phil bombs....someday)

However, this time it doesn't look like there will be any time aftter the first band or two that we will ever want to leave, and there might not beach of a set break either. For the newbies with big goals of cooking, think twice. Cleaning cookware from the day before sux and you won't have asmuch time as you think to hoof back, make burgers eat and return. I would recommend stuff easy to prep and with minimal cleanup at lockn. Wraps work well and don't get smashed like sandwiches. You can roll up 4-5 with your fav lunch meat cheese lettuce cream chz dip or whatever and roll in Saran Wrap. They fit well in long sleeves of tshirts or whatever buried in a backpack. Your teammate brings in a squishy six pack cooler with 2 sealed water bottles pre frozen. Once inside you move all the wraps into the cooler which was allowed in cuz it only had water bottles and the frozen bottles keep the wraps good till hungry in 4 hrs.

I can't wait!!!!!!

Frozen spaghetti or BBQ heats up quick on a Coleman stove. 1 pot cleanup.

Yeah I agree with all of the above. Don't forget by the third day your soggy cooler will get water inside lots of containers. Nothing like having your butter all wet and gross or opening up the ham to find it waterlogged.

I love bringing almost all of our water in sport bottles pre frozen. They keep the cooler cold longer so u buy less ice. They are also great in the venue when u want icy cold water. Bring a second container of water to keep adding to the frozen bottle as you drink from it. Never had them confiscated once... You just plead the case that its frozen so u won't overheat if they give u the stinkeye.

And we can do a whole thread on the art of dry ice coolers. With dry ice you can bring ice cream treats! Nothing beats sitting in the lawn in the sun a hour or so and then give out ice cream sandwiches or Popsicles.

Yeah, and it keeps the cooler dry. When we cook big, we have one drink cooler with ice, one frozen cooler and one food cooler that is dry with frozen bottles to keep things cool. Can rotate things from the frozen cooler into the dry cooler throughout the weekend. Lots of good like bacon freeze well. Make 3 packages of bacon and each day move one from the frozen cooler to the dry cooler. As the frozen food thaws it keeps the rest of the dry cooler cold and then your salad or whatever never gets waterlogged.

We go all out to have a nice camp and we coordinate a lot of great food. It helps that there are several of us going to camp together, so we just bring a few things that are enough for everbody and we share. I like to chose food that I can prepare in advance, seal in vacuum bags, and freeze. The vacuum bags can go right into boiling water and the food is heated without even dirtying a pot. You can also heat two or three things together in the same pot. This year I'm bringing pulled pork I smoked last week and froze. I have enough for way more than our group, so anyone who can find us in VIP camping is invited for BBQ sandwiches. Making pasta salad to go with (also in a vacuum bag). I'm bringing a little grill, so for another meal I am marinating and freezing chicken breasts, which we'll grill and have with pita and all the fixings. Someone else is bringing Gumbo in a vacuum bag, and someone is bringing a pasta sauce in a boiling bag and sphagellti. Can cok the noodles and heat the sauce in the same pot. The vacuum bag is a great festival trick. We're also bringing lots of coffee. I am a coffee roaster so I'm bringing a bunch of a new coffee we are direct buying from Haiti, Haitian Marmelade. I think it's one of the really great coffees, but very little is making its way out of Haiti. Anyway, find us in VIP camping and I'll make you a cuppa.

If you're really lazy, you can get liquid eggs in a carton, too. I get the whites or Beaters that way, because I have a heart condition.