I died once because of a spawn near a skeleton in the middle of the night, but on my second attempt, I have gotten myself enough food to sustain myself for a bit, an iron pick, some torches, etc. My advice is to start out trying to get wood and killing the leaves of normal trees, in hopes that they should drop apples. Provided you're not moving much, you should be getting apples faster than you'll be losing food, and ti shouldn't be long before you can move on to actually doing productive things.