[Sca-cooks] Pennsic on a shoestring

[grizly]

Dry ice is your friend for coolers designed for long term storage and not
daily/hourly in and out.  Set a good cooler up with frozen foods and dry
ice, and you can keep food frozen then cold for a week on one load, easy.
Gotta keep it closed as much as possible, keep it full as possible as long
as possible, and keep the dry ice dry.  Padded gloves and your off.  Use a
different cooler for in and out access through the day.

Dry ice is pretty affordable around here last time I bought it (yikes, 2+
years ago).  By the pound, you can get good deal if you can find it near
you.  Saves on buying ice every day.  And will reduce overall expence of
cooler use.

niccolo

-----Original Message-----
<<<SNIP>>>
If they're bringing a cooler, they could pre-cook a bunch of meals, pack
them flat in baggies (or better yet, vacuum sealer bags, if they know
anyone with a vacuum sealer) and freeze them.  Keep those at the bottom
of a big cooler, underneath the ice.  A meal will stay frozen for days
like that, and even once it thaws, since it's precooked it'll stay good
longer than raw meats.  Just remember to stay on top of replacing that
ice!  The cost of ice would be their biggest concern.  For a big cooler,
I recall using three eight pound bags to fill it in the first place,
then topping it off with at least one, usually two, bags a day.  How
much were they last year?  $1.25?  At that rate, one large cooler would
run them, depending on the weather and how much shade they have, between
$11.25-$18.75 per week.  Oof, you know, I never thought about it in
those terms... here I've griped about the cost of turnpike fees to get
out there ;)
<<<SNIP>>>

-Magdalena vander Brugghe

--
Tara Sersen Boroson