How many cups of tea with one tea bag and other frugal musings....

[JLR]

My husband drinks green tea in a one litre pot. He uses one bag and makes about 4-5 pots out of it. So, 4-5 litres of tea per bag!

I drink black tea and like a new bag for each cup!

[WESTOFTHEHUDSON]

My BF likes to bake things in the oven (potatoes, bacon, etc) on foil so he doesn't have to clean the pan. THIS DRIVES ME INSANE.

If he doesn't like cleaning it because he doesn't like cleaning in general or if it's a tougher pan to wash without scratching. My roaster pan can be tough to clean and I have asked DH to stop using very abrasive scrubbers on it. Our solution was to place a silicone baking mat inside the roasting pan. It keeps the roaster a breeze and the silicone mat gets the brunt of cooking mess and is also super easy to wash.

[anastrophe]

+1 to the silicone mat, it works wonders. Also, the rubber spatula, which saves food waste and makes cleanup easier.

And yeah, I only use looseleaf, and have worked hard to figure out the minimum number of leaves to put in my pot. A pinch and a half, or roughly a half teaspoon, but you'll have to experiment with your own pot.

[wordnerd]

2-3 cups out of a bag. The third id usually too weak for my liking, but I drink it anyway.

[Villanelle]

One of the many joys of loose leaf tea is that you can use exactly the right amount of tea leaves, unlike the fixed size of the tea bag that PG Tips et al have decided is how you like your tea (those corporate bastards!) I like my tea weak most of the time, so I just have a scraping of leaves rather than a spoonful. But some teas need to brew quickly or you start getting a bitter aftertaste, so then I put more leaves in.

We also have teapots (eBay!) and lovely gold-edged teacups (for free!). These are very important to me as it does make the whole 'cup of tea' event into an experience rather than a functional act. I use a mug if I am only making tea for myself, but it's often tea for two so it's usually a pot. I like the fact that we have to have the same tea then, too, as it makes tea more of a thing.

I've got all wistfully philosophical and aesthetic without meaning to! I'll stop before this turns into a treatise on tea as a metaphor for the ills of modern society...

I've really been wanting some "real" tea cups.  I use mugs, some of which are fun and happy, and sometimes that suits my mood just fine.  But I'd really like some elegant tea cups.  I've had trouble justifying the expense, even if I may be able to pick them up cheap at a thrift store.

[anastrophe]

I've really been wanting some "real" tea cups.  I use mugs, some of which are fun and happy, and sometimes that suits my mood just fine.  But I'd really like some elegant tea cups.  I've had trouble justifying the expense, even if I may be able to pick them up cheap at a thrift store.

I've seen hundreds at thrift stores for usually less than a dollar each. The Goodwill near me almost always has them.

[Villanelle]

I'm living overseas right now and thrift stores here tend to be different--nicer and more expensive.  I've looked, but only seen large sets or very fancy (and pricey) individual cups.  If I could find 4-6 cups and saucers (no need for them to match) for $1 each, I could definitely justify that!  Maybe I'll look when I'm back in the States. 

[anastrophe]

I'm living overseas right now and thrift stores here tend to be different--nicer and more expensive.  I've looked, but only seen large sets or very fancy (and pricey) individual cups.  If I could find 4-6 cups and saucers (no need for them to match) for $1 each, I could definitely justify that!  Maybe I'll look when I'm back in the States.

Ah, that makes sense.

I do sometimes see matching saucers but generally never full sets. They show up at garage sales too sometimes, but usually one or two at a time.

[Radagast]

Two cups per bag?!?! More like two bags per cup! If I am prepared and drinking a lot of tea I can save two bags to put into a third cup.

Recently I have been getting free bulk green tea from China by the kilogram, which drastically cut my use of bags.

I like tea too much to be a snob.

[shedinator]

I'm not reusing tea bags.  Tea bags are damned cheap to begin with, and the second cup from one bag is undrinkable.

Is the question "should you reuse a tea bag?" or is it "how many cups of tea with one tea bag?" I thought the OP was asking the latter. I wouldn't reuse a bag, but many bags have enough tea in them to make two cups. I'll put 3 bags (or, more likely, their loose leaf equivalent) in a pot and get 6-8 cups of tea out of the brew.

[ETA] the above is also assuming off-the-shelf black tea from an American grocery store, most likely with the name "Bigelow" or "Lipton" printed on the packet somewhere. If you've got halfway decent tea, the flavor can actually improve the more times you brew. Freznow detailed that quite well a few posts back.

[midweststache]

My BF likes to bake things in the oven (potatoes, bacon, etc) on foil so he doesn't have to clean the pan. THIS DRIVES ME INSANE.

If he doesn't like cleaning it because he doesn't like cleaning in general or if it's a tougher pan to wash without scratching. My roaster pan can be tough to clean and I have asked DH to stop using very abrasive scrubbers on it. Our solution was to place a silicone baking mat inside the roasting pan. It keeps the roaster a breeze and the silicone mat gets the brunt of cooking mess and is also super easy to wash.

I think it's a bit of both. Primarily, it's one less item for him to worry about cleaning. I think a smaller part of it is also that these are new-ish pans, and the ones we upgraded from were so god-awful to clean he doesn't want to run the risk of making our new pans turn into our old pans (our old pans were hand-me-downs from our parents when they got married 30+ years ago...)