FOOD

???Ok we are going camping for a week. What do you guys & gals pack for food. We are thinking about getting one of those electric 12v coolers to use as a fridge.
My wife thinks it's easier to eat out, because of the size of the fridge.
Thanks
Hungry Jack ;D

If you are really going "camping" and not "RVing" eating out (in a restaurant) sort of defeats part of the purpose and eliminates many of the fun memories. If there are only two of you I you could almost pack enough food (loosely the air must be allowed to circulate) for the whole trip but certainly for 4 to 5 days at a time.

We do light lunches usually sandwiches, easy breakfasts with pancakes and bacon or waffles, and an evening meal with steaks, or chicken breast or hamburger or other meat broiled over charcoal. Meat, lettuce, tomato, and cheese is about all we have to refrigerate other than a quart or so of milk (we don't drink that nasty stuff). We take an ice chest when we go with our kids and grand kids. They bring their campers too so cooking becomes a team affair with the husbands taking care of all outside cooking, the ladies the inside stuff, and kids just generally under foot (along with the dogs) and asking from time to time "Is it ready yet?"

If your gong "RVing" by all means eat out! It is easier but not as much fun.

[Cateye]

We take a 5-day Igloo cooler to supplement the refrigerator and use a space blanket cut to fit it snugly. This and the refrigerator are enough to keep us fed for 7 days. We recently attended the Jeep Safari in Moab UT for 9 days and only ate out on two occasions and we did not have to purchase ice!

[Bill]

Hungry Jack -

We bought a 40 quart Coleman thermoelectric cooler from WalMart (go to Walmart.com and enter "Coleman therrmoelectric cooler" in the search box). For us, it has worked great! It almost doubles the capacity of the TM refrig, and it can be moved into the tow vehicle to provide cold sodas and lunches while on the road. We don't leave home without it, unless we will be totally dry camping.

If you consider a TE cooler, be aware that they operate run from 12 VDC only, and you need an AC adapter to run it from household AC power. For some reason, the adapter is really expensive if you buy it separately. The Coleman coolers from Walmart include the adapter, and the total cost is about $63.

A TE cooler draws a fair amount of power. If you will have hookups, no problem. If you will be driving every day, no problem. But if you are going to be dry-camping for a few days, it is not the right solution since it will kill your battery. On the other hand, if you don't have power available, it still works quite well as an unpowered conventional cooler.

As for eating out being "easier", my wife and I have a deal. She cooks (she is great!), and I wash dishes (I'm pretty good at that). Given a good refrigerator, which the TM refrig plus the TE cooler provides, cooking is no harder than it is at home. Washing dishes is a back-breaker (someone here mentioned it on the WishList thread), but I am willing to do it.

In fairness, not everyone has had good luck with the TE cooler. You might do a search, just to see the comments. I am sure that the old problems in the 12-volt outlet have been corrected by the 2004 models.

I have had no problems. And I sure prefer a TE cooler to buying ice.

Bill

We frequently pack one step meals, you know the kind that has all ingredients including the meats, because they take up little space but are good meals. We also plan on doing short shopping each week on the road to fill up the necessary items that we need.
We tend to travel light and add as we need.

ColoradoCop 8)

We came to the TM after years of pop-up camping (with 4 kids!) and years of tent camping before that. We tend to think lightweight when we camp. That means one-pot meals (a rice mix with some type of added meat and maybe some vegetables with lots of custom seasonings) or tacos or .... We will do steaks once in a while, but we don't eat them much at home so we don't feel driven to do it travelling. I do a lot of Dutch Oven cooking (casseroles and stews) and a reasonable amount of baking (using a Dutch Oven or Outback Oven) - the little stove in the trailer is pretty small. We love fresh biscuits and muffins! For meat we use a lot of dehydrated hamburger (no more worrying about keeping the meat fresh) or canned chicken.

We keep lettuce, tomatoes, milk, sandwich meat, etc in the frig. We always take an ice chest for soft drinks and lunches away from the trailer. Since we do lots of dry camping we've never even tried a thermoelectric cooler. There are some good cookbooks that are specially oriented toward the RV cook who works with limited space and equipment. We also plan on hitting local grocery stores every 3-4 days. It's fun to see regional variations in food.

Pam