Whenever I go camping I pack a cooler with ice and put my perishable food items in there. Easy to grab snacks, like fruit, pastries, and pre packaged items are also a favourite of mine.

Also, having a portable grill helps when you cannot use fire to cook.

Ramen and soylent

Why no boiled water? A small backpacking stove, something like a Pocket Rocket from MSR, is lightweight and can give you a very small, controlled flame that’s hot enough to boil a liter of water in less than two minutes. And if you look around on Amazon, you can find them even cheaper than MSR, usually for less than $20. They connect to an isopropane canister which runs about $5.

Here’s a list of some candidate foods, compiled from the experience of people who live in vans and other vehicles without refrigeration.

No easy access to fire? Is that because fire is forbidden or because getting wood and/or a place to burn stuff isn’t available? If it’s the latter, a gas burner is your friend

It depends if you’re not trying to poop that whole time?

Don’t know how feasible this is to cook, but jerky will last more than 4 days. One of my favorite snacks, but it is very expensive.

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Nuts and dried fruit, granola bars, halva, canned beans in tomato sauce, canned meat and fish and other canned stuff, bread, all sorts of cheese, cucumbers, smoked meat were the staples of no-cooking-needed foodstuffs that keep for several days in the summer when I did hiking in my younger days. For breakfast, muesli with milk from powder. You can prep buckwheat overnight in cold water and eat it for lunch or breakfast. Onions and garlic to add taste, fresh herbs will keep just fine, too. Sun-dried tomatoes. Bell peppers.

Basically, you need to start thinking antique: what did travellers and adventurers eat several hundred years ago when refridgeration wasn’t a thing?

If you’re in England look into the Duke of Edinburgh club. It’s an outdoors camping club for youth. You should be able to find a packing list and it will have food suggestions.

That’s just long enough for things that aren’t shelf stable to start going bad, depending on local conditions. Bread can mold in a couple days though, in warm and humid places.

So, focus in on shelf-stable or preserved things, whether made in a modern method, (sterile packaging of some sort) or an old fashioned method, (drying, curing, smoking) or just naturally able to keep (nuts, seeds, chocolate, honey).

Someone posted their granola bar recipe, that looked pretty solid. I would certainly not bring a bunch of pasties or a calzone unless I was also bringing a cooler. Then I’d be bringing ingredients and tools and making them on-site just for fun, as I assume I’m now car camping, or at least camping fairly close to my vehicle. If backpacking in, then absolutely not. Ready-to-eat, shelf-stable stuff only, to cut weight and stay efficient. And a pasty or calzone would squish in the backpack and end up gross anyway.

You can easily make overnight oats with dry ingredients (oats, fruit, nuts/seeds, some syrup) and some water each evening and then have them for breakfast/lunch.

Can you bring a canister cook stove? something like a Jetboil? that way no need for a whole fire etc. you can boil water etc, cook basic stuff like ramen etc. make coffee…Hardy veggies should be good, beef jerky, cured meats like salami etc. dried fruits and nuts, bread, crackers etc. regular fruit, granola bars…i would just bring a little burner thing if you can it will be so much nicer than only eating cold foods etc.

You can dehydrate literally anything, and re-hydrate it on the trail with a little water and heat. Meats, Fruits, Vegetables, Soups, the works.

Another thing I don’t see people talking about much is canned food. Almost all canned food is precooked or otherwise sterilized, and it takes years to expire when the can is left sealed. While cold ravioli isn’t the most satisfying meal, it will fill your stomach without making you sick.