Food to take if no cooking allowed?

[silversixpence]

We are going to a festival this summer and will be there for 4 days. There is no cooking allowed but plenty of food stalls, but I am imagining lots of long queues and it will probably be expensive so trying to plan a few meals to take with us. Any ideas?

[JennyWren]

Breakfast - take brioche, cereal with frozen 1pt milk cartons, croissants, etc. Wraps (more compact and keep better than bread) for lunches, with bagged salad (will keep fresh with the frozen milk for a couple of days in a decent cool box) and chorizo or other dried or tinned meat. Main meals are more tricky - pre-prepared pasta dish to eat cold on the first night, but after that you may have to go for the stalls.

[TheFantasticMrsFox]

Are you allowed to boil a kettle OP?
If so there are a wide choice of noodles, soups and other powdery stuff in packets that you just add water to. You could eat that with cold meats (frozen initially) and bagged salad.
If you could aim to do half your dinners like that and half from the stalls you can cut the expense down by, well.. half :o

[CampingClaire]

What about making up grain/bean salads to add meat to? Take smoked meats (chicken, hot roast salmon etc) that can be flaked or chopped in chunks through the salad when you're there.
If you are allowed to boil water...take straight to wok noodles and add them and salmon/chicken and ready shredded veg to a miso soup sachet?
I'm feeling hungry on your behalf...hope kettle boiling is allowed!!

[Blu]

Mezze: Big tins of dolmades from your local Mediterranean / Turkish shop, a jar of olives, some tomatoes.

Oatcakes and cheese, tins of tuna.

You can get spicy bean mixes in a tin, could make a bean and tuna salad.

Sealed longlife packets of croissants, brioche etc.

Tinned ham, tinned potato salad (getting desperate now!)

Tinned pineapple chunks, tinned cream, and shortbread biscuits.

Just scour the tinned and dried food sections in the supermarket.

Oranges.

Jamaican Ginger Cake and Mr Kipling Cakes.

A pork pie on day 1.

[evelynj]

Tins could be heavy to carry.ni used to take a loaf,am tub of dairylea & ground white pepper-lunch & sometimes tea at Glastonbury. Cereal bars, fruit& chocolate!

Salami, grated cheese, decant some pickle or mustard etc. have something fresher the first day or two....ime tho, anything 'wet' or oily leaks!

[silversixpence]

I have checked and they have an area for baby feeding with microwaves and kettles but otherwise no way of cooking. There are no EHUs so unless there's a way of cooking by plugging into the car charger there are no options! I think I will embrace the no cooking/washing up and just bring brioche, snacks and drinks.

[DealForTheKids]

Lots of grazing is a good idea. I tend to take pringles (tubes don't get squished in your bag), babybels and cheese strings (they're so processed that the lack of refrigeration isn't really a problem - although cheese strings do take on very odd shapes after a while!), pepperami (ditto re: processedness), brioche. Satsumas last well. Cereal bars are pretty standard.

If you want to do pot noodles etc then the stalls are generally quite good at giving you cups of hot water (you may have to pay though... that said dinner for the price of a cup of tea isn't too bad!)

My boyfriend eats vast amounts of Sorreen when at a festival...

I'm not a fan of tins as I agree they're rather heavy.

[littlesupersparks]

We went to a festival that didn't allow cooking by the tent lat year so we didn't take food and everyone was doing it! I am planning to take all breakfasts, lunches and snacks and we will be taking a gas stove - will assess cooking when we get there as there are apparently designated cooking areas.

Breakfasts: will probably avoid cereal due to the milk issue - maybe take a frozen pint for the first day. I will be taking some sneaky bacon for the first morning. Pain au chocolate. Ready wrapped crepes with chocolate. Coffee filter/strainer thing.

Lunches: Loaf of bread. Packet of ready sliced cheese - frozen - won't be too sweaty for at least the first day. Lots of fruit. Peanut butter. Crisps. Mini cheddars. Cereal bars. Packets of value choc chip cookies. Maybe some wraps. All this will be in a bag to carry around all day so probably not salad and stuff.

Dinner - planning to eat at food stalls but will probably take a few things - cooked pasta or bags of microwave rice need minimal heating. Tins of 'taco beans'. On a recent camping holiday we discovered tins of curry and chilli that are yummy!!