Foods that are ready to eat?

I am making plans to take the family camping soon. Of course, part of planning, I am preparing foods ahead of time. I do plan on cooking our meals on the campfire. I also have three very small kids, and sometimes they just cannot wait for food to be cooked. If you have toddlers/infants, you know exactly what I am talking about! What are some ready to eat foods I can bring?

 

Any food can be regarded as "ready" to eat in some extent. I could say that bringing patties and meal burgers are a tasty set "ready to eat food". Now, I suppose you mean food that are safe to eat "raw" without throwing up your bowels or end up camping at a hospital emergency room instead. These are: nuts,onions, fruits in general,pepper, seaweed, honey and coconuts. Now, if you're looking for something rich on calories and make you sate like fish,rice, bread, beans or meat, then I'm afraid all those are far better and safer after being cooked.

 

It also depends on how long you intend to camp. Some of these ready to eat food can go bad after some hours or a few days. Since you are looking for some food for your children to eat while you do actual cooking I think foods like biscuits, chocolate bars, milk and beverages are good items to carry along to the camp. You can also get bread, fish or meat tuna or both too. These are good examples of ready to eat foods.

 

Well you can bring can goods, breads, cereals, oats, noodles, biscuits and snacks that they can eat while waiting for your main meal to get cooked

 

Mostly, we took along foods that were nutritious for the kids to snack on, and not something that would spoil their appetite for the regular meal. One of my favorite snacks to bring along when my kids were little was vienna sausages. Those little cans were lightweight and easy to pack along, and the protein satisfied their hunger and didn't creat the kind of hyperactivity that sweets or other snack foods might do.
I also packed sandwiches for all of us to snack on, or for a quick lunch. When I was camping with the kids, we didn't make anything that took a long time to cook either, so no complicated meals, and that way they didn't have to be hungry for very long waiting for the food to get done. Even hotdogs roasted on a stick over the fine and maybe some marshmallows for dessert made a creat camping meal that the kids loved, and was easy to do.

 

Salami and dry cheese is always a staple.

If you wind up with the ability to boil water...these are fantastic and are a core element to all of my backpacking trips.
They're Indian and Thai food in vacuum packed foil pouches (almost indestructible) and you simply heat the whole sealed pouch in boiling water. Eat straight from the pouch and you have no clean up either. They are very flavorful and surprisingly spicy for a packaged food.
You can also take along "boil in the bag" rice (Uncle Ben's or others are readily available at the supermarket) and use that as a base.

Good stuff for camping!

 

Everything in a can is ready to eat, but my favorites have to be tuna and beans, as they combine well together. If we want to add some olive oil, onions and tomatoes, we have the perfect fast meal without cooking, and most would appreciate it. Salami and cheese would work fine for me as well @ptahm22.

 

...but alas many of the places that I go have a can/bottle ban with some hefty fines if you have these in your pack or in your canoe. So I prepackage foods or re package foods accordingly. The great thing today is there are a variety of food stuffs. For example you can buy bacon strips or bacon pieces already cooked - either one is good for recipes and such.

​

THE TREE
of
FOOD PLANNING
The secret is to plan ahead.
People will often buy their supplies the
night before they leave on a trip. Some even do it
the same day. Not a good idea. Plan several weeks ahead
or months ahead for that matter. Try out recipes and see what
you like best. Learn how to package foods to cut down on waste and weight.
If you are using baggies make sure you label the contents carefully and put the recipe
inside so you know what you have. I pack all my food into a barrel and stay away from those
plastic containers - I want to save on space and weight. When you are shopping take at look at products that you might use on the trail or on your trip.
Another thing...buy food, remember
pop, candy, potato chips
really aren't food -
just junk .


​

 

For a family camping, my usual food supply are bread and snack foods. But for meals, it is usually uncooked rice that we have to cook and for the dishes, it would depend on the facility of the campsite. In one campsite where there is a barbecue grill, we can practically cook almost anything as long as we bring the charcoal for fuel. But when the campsite have nothing like that, boiled eggs and cooked meat would be enough.