I carry a stove for the same reason wahoonc does--coffee. We also make brekfast
#1 as we are breaking camp.
We pretty much follow the the regime Machka outlined in her fisrst post:
1 week. Non-remote area. I carry snacks, like I would for any other day ride.
And then a day on tour might look like this ...
Lunch: Buy lunch at grocery store to eat there. Buy enough for dinner and tomorrow's breakfast. Buy a few extra snacks for tomorrow.
Dinner: Eat what I bought at lunch.
Breakfast the next morning: Eat what I bought at lunch the previous day.
And repeat.
In more remote areas I will carry a freeze dried dinner as a backup in case I miscalculate, have to wild camp or do not pass a place to buy groceries. On our last tour we used 2 freeze dried dinners. The first one because the campground was about 6 miles from the store. We replaced the one we used when we rode through a bigger town, and ended up using it too. We were too tired/lazy to ride into a town a few miles from the campground, and it was getting toward the end of the trip so there was no need to carry it anymore.
Regardless of what you use, it is good to have something as backup in case of an "emergency". A couple packages of ramen noodles are light, cheap and fill the void in a pinch.