Glorious Tea Time – always time for tea and maybe a slice of homemade cake

The Americans didn’t know what they were doing (and ultimately missing) in Boston in 1773 when they dumped the tea over the ships side.

Tea, greatest discovery ever in my book, always have a cup on the go, but my love of the stuff has cost me a fortune up to now, its not cheap, well, the ‘dust’ you get in some tea bags can be, but they’re putrid. No, I’m talking the quality stuff that actually looks like and tastes like, tea!
Being the person that I am, I have very rarely paid full price for any product and tea is no exception, always buy when on offer, 50% free, 100% free, buy 1 get 1 free, 3 for the price of 2 etc but the sneaky so and so's need watching, don’t just take the supermarkets word for it that you’re having a bargain - check it yourself, I recently came across an offer where you could buy one for £2.85 or have 2 for £6.00?????? Who fell for that one? I’m sure a fair few did - you have to watch for things like this, just because it’s got a big flash sign saying offer doesn’t mean you are getting the best deal.
These offers are all well and good, but sometimes you have to go beyond offers and use the products more than once to get the best value from them and tea bags are perfect for this, coffee is dissolvable so is useless for repeat use, but tea can be used over and over.

Making the most of a tea bag

Cup 1: boil the kettle with just enough water for your needs or enough to cover the element in the kettle, don’t want the kettle to explode, (I need to investigate which is cheaper to boil a kettle – gas or electric?), put a new tea bag in a mug and fill with boiling water, spoon the tea bag out after a few seconds and put into a different mug and set aside for later, then you can add your milk to the tea, don’t do it before as the tea bag will start smelling of sour milk after awhile.

Cup 2: boil the kettle again, but this time pour onto the previously used tea bag you set aside earlier, fish out the bag after the water’s turned the colour you want (bear in mind it will get weaker as you go on so you’ll need to leave for slightly longer each time) and put into another mug and set aside for later, now add milk (if you wish).

Cup 3: repeat as for cup 2 but this time fish out the tea bag and put into a tea pot, or mug again if you prefer.

Cup 4: pour boiling water into the teapot, or mug, and leave for 5 minutes or so, then pour and drink.

I find that if you squeeze the tea bag each time it does retain some flavour for the next one, but by cup 4 it’s starting to get pretty weak so you may have to add a few used bags together – (that’s why I use the teapot as mugs get full pretty quick if you’re trying to use two or three bags at the same time), but only use them from the same day otherwise you’ll not enjoy the experience.

Loose tea works to a similar extent but you’ll need to use one of those tea ball thingy’s and you’ll only get 2 or 3 mugs from each spoonful but as I do prefer loose to bags I will indulge now and again and splash out on a spoonful of loose tea rather than a bag.

And that’s what I’m after, making every last thing earn its keep and go as far as possible, saving me money into the bargain.

And then when you’ve finished totally with the tea bags, throw them on the compost heap which will rot them down for compost the following year. Great!

Until next time: I’m going to try for more than 4, we’ll see how that works – aim: one bag per day!