Block Ice

I don’t know why we can’t buy block ice in the southeast. We bought a block of ice on June 22 in Trempeleau, WI and I still have half of the block in my freezer. We got home to SC on July 5 & we had some hot days while we were camping too.

That was only place we saw it on this trip. We found in the Southwest a few years ago & grab if we see it. And we do freeze old plastic bottles to use on local trips to make our own blocks. We didn’t take them for a 3 week trip as we didn’t want have to keep with them once they melted & didn’t want to throw them away either.

 

Block ice is more expensive and time consuming to make vs. cube ice, which is usually hollow, so it freezes faster (cheaper to make) and melts faster (buy more sooner).

Ironically it seemed like block ice was everywhere and cheap when we were in Alaska 5 years ago.

On longer trips when we take both the Dometic and the Yeti we will make block ice in gallon juice containers (From Costco). 4 containers makes 32 pounds of ice. In our Yeti this will last from about 6 days (New Mexico and Arizona) to 2 weeks (Wyoming). When they’re about half melted I cut the container away from the block. Before doing this we don’t deal with water in the Yeti, but after we do. Then I’ll just throw the plastic away unless recycling is available.

Another thing we’ve done is make food at home and freeze it in rectangular Rubbermaid containers. The 3.2 cup size holds enough for 2 servings.

Once it is frozen I turn it upside down and run warm water over the bottom of the container to release the frozen block of food. Then use a food saver to “shrink wrap” the frozen portion. Keep in home freezer until time to leave on trip.

Our food is now an ice block, which will take several days to begin thawing, if in a full Yeti with the aforementioned ice blocks.

We’ve also placed the frozen food blocks in the Dometic set to a freezing temperature.

The food can be removed from the shrink wrap to reheat, or just boil the bag in water to reheat and save the clean up. We’ve even done steak this way. Season and grill at home, freeze it, shrink wrap it with the food saver. In camp boil the cooked steak in the plastic wrap for 6-8 minutes. Tastes like it just came off the grill.

On our last 2 long trips we went about 2 weeks before needing a grocery store.

 

Try adding a pound of dry ice to your regular supply of ice cubes. Don’t add too much as it will freeze everything solid. Just enough to lower the temperature beyond what the regular ice does.

Lots of places now carry dry ice.

 

We normally do food prep at home so that when we are camping we are just heating up food mostly. And we do freeze some tings to help them last longer into a trip. On this recent trip, the one thing threw us off our normal game was after 2 days in Cumberland Gap we are at our daughter's town. There we ate out mostly and by the time we moved we were 4 days from the house with only 2 more nights camping until we turned the camper over to Camp Inn. Mary Ellen went ahead and cooked the meat for tacos at our daughter's place so that all we had to do was heat it up.

May have to look into the shrink wrap. When I grill chicken or pork tenderloin, I usually grill as much as will fit on the grill. The pork tenderloin, I'm indirect grilling so I can cook 2 packages at a time. We freeze most of it and use it over the next few weeks. And I could certainly do that with other cuts of meat too.

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

We can get dry ice at the grocery store where we shop and we've talked about that before.

 

Any experience with it? I didn't have time to resarch it, but it looks like it takes a reasonably high quantity to keep a cooler cold....

Funny story, I used to work in a photo lab and all of our film was shipped to us in dry ice. I throw a block in the mop bucket and came out to clean a mess - and the store manager flies across the lab "WHAT CHEMICALS DID YOU MIX!?!!"

 

Having lived and traveled in the Intermountain West, dry ice can be found in most grocery stores. Not so here in Wisconsin. Have to obtain it from a dry ice supplier.

 

Here in Pennsylvania it is not in stores but supliers but easy to get.

 

Indiana -- dry ice is available --- "Meijer" definately sells it here in Indiana/Michigan area....they generlaly have it in a case near the customer service counter.

 

If you are in the Southeat, Publix Grocery stores Carrie’s dry ice.

 

I believe it’s because it gets so cold here in the winter that people want no part of cold in the summer.