Food as HP is a unique mechanic but you can adjust to it. The rested buff is actually more important. You can get away with lower quality foods as long as you are rested. You should also have a portal or 2 at your main base with a unique name so that you can carry the materials you need to build the other end of the portal where you are going to be exploring. That way if something unfortunate happens you don't have far to travel to recover your gear.

You can recover your gear after death with console commands. If you use the fly command you can get up out of the trees and you won't aggro anything (you'll still need frost resistance meads in the mountains). Fly with sprint is also insanely high speed travel.