Improvised fridge?

Question

Are there any tips for keeping food cold and storing it well when you are just working with what you can carry on you, generally without much special equipment? Like, for the most part, making use of what is available from a grocery store.

For example: you can pick up bags of ice, but they’ll melt, so you’ll need an easy way to dump out the melted water, and it’ll be heavy, so you might not want to carry it around.

Or, maybe there are certain thermal containers that can keep stuff at a very even temperature, so that if you just take it out of the grocery store fridge, it stays colder at least a bit longer? Or put some frozen food in there with it, to thaw? If you don’t have a special cooler bag, is there a material that’s decent to use as an insulator, like clothing / cloth, or brown paper bags?

Or, are there foods that are known to not spoil that quickly when opened at room temperature, like bread, cheese, fruits, etc.? What else?

Answer 1

Buy food that doesn't go off quickly.

• Canned food.

• Dehydrated food. Contains no water, and light to carry.

If you buy fresh food, eat it first.

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When camping I make an improvised refrigerator (it won't be cold like a refrigerator, but cooler than ambient temperature):

• Put some water in a bowl.

• Place the food item in the bowl (inside another container if needed).

• Drape a wet cloth over the food container.

• Allow the edges of the cloth to sit in the water.

• Place the bowl in the shade in the draftiest place.

• Evaporation will cool the water in the cloth around the food.

• Replenish the water in the bowl as needed.

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You didn't say you are camping.

Three friends of mine travelled from UK around Europe in a tiny Renault van and they took a 12 volt battery operated refrigerator with them. Modern versions draw about 1 amp on average, which is about the same as two old-style parking light bulbs.

You can buy these for more or less than 100 GBP.

Answer 2

@Willeke mentioned the essential point: what is the temperature range where you will be? My experience is backpacking in the US West at 10,000 feet elevation and above (3,050 meters). It hardly ever freezes there in summer, but some foods keep well up to about 2 weeks if insulated (e.g., by being wrapped in clothing) when you are on the move, and if stored deep in a place of permanent deep shade when you are camped (easy to find because of the omniprescence of semi-sunken large boulders).

But even so, freeze dried food, dried food, dried fruit, cheese, crackers, bread, trail mix, and a few canned delicacies, will be the reliable staples for a trip of 2 weeks or so without resupply. Furthermore, a diet of fresh food is too heavy to carry for a trip of more than a few days. The truly fail-safe extra food on a long trip is the body weight you can afford to loose.

The one unsettling experience we had was with canned frozen orange juice, which we carried as a luxury. After two weeks or so, the orange juice fermented, and we had orange juice wine. I do not recommend it.

As I said, this is based on spring-summer-fall travel at over 10,000 feet in the US West.

Answer 3

These days I have a campervan with a fridge, but in earlier car camping days I used a well-insulated bag or box, either with ice packs (also called freezer blocks) if I could get them refrozen, or bought ice (or obtained for free by asking at the fish counter in a supermarket, when there was none for sale - it was fresh, not fishy).

The trick to buying ice and using it for cooling is to get fairly small quantities, and put it in a wide-necked container, such as a nalgene bottle. That keeps it from getting everything wet, and means that if it started for for human consumption, you can drink it when it's melted. This works for hiking too, when it's a waste of weight otherwise.

Your insulated container can be improved by further wrapping it in clothing, but condensation can make things damp. That's not great if your evenings get cold after hot days, and you need your warm layers.

At a static camp, I've used the old scouts' trick of standing the cool box outside in the shade in a breeze, with a wet towel over the top (one end hanging in a bucket of water keeps it damp). The evaporation of the water gives cooling. I've even done this in an office with no fridge, as my colleagues' milk spoiled on a hot day otherwise. When hiking I've wrapped a water bottle in a damp towel on top of my backpack - hot conditions only as it tends to get your neck wet. This really only works well if the humidity is low.

Answer 4

I just wrap food in clothes I’m not wearing and put it in the bag where I also have my quilt. This provides some protection during the hotter parts of the day. Good enough to make bell peppers or cheese last a day or two even in summer.

Of course adding some ice bags would improve things but they’d also be heavy and you run the risk of condensation and/or leaks.