More food related frugals happening over here.

First, I decluttered (read: ate) the entire loaf of chocolate chip banana bread.

Next, my dearly beloved discovered a ham steak in the deep freezer and decided that it would make a nice addition to the cabbage soup. So he put it on the smoker today and later we'll have cabbage soup. I'm a strict vegetarian so he'll be adding ham steak to his portion only.

We received a huge box of fruit as a Christmas gift from his aunt and uncle. It's some hybrid-orange-citrus fruit that is apparently only available in January. So they gifted us a box. Hmmm...not really my thing, but fortunately he is a huge juice drinker and so has been juicing a bunch every day for fresh "orange" juice. They will not go to waste and I don't have to try to figure out how to consume them myself.

Finally, the dearly beloved has been trying to cut down on his caffeine consumption so has been making a huge pitcher of decaf green tea every few days. He likes to sweeten it with honey and as beekeepers that is a no brainer. He just finished jarring some honey over the weekend from a 5 gallon pail so he poured his tea into the empty 5 gallon pail and used the last of the honey to sweeten it this time around. That was a serious waste not, want not moment. Usually we would set the empty pail out for the bees to clean out, but this isn't feasible in the dead of winter in New England.

Another tea related frugal. When there was a holiday special happening, I bought a box of 100 tea bags from Mighty leaf tea. I usually don't buy that brand because it's more expensive than buying loose-leaf tea. But the discount plus free shipping made it reasonably priced and I thought it would be a nice chance of pace from my usually tea. I've been using my Bodum tea pot for months now to make a pot of tea every morning. I figured out that if I skip using the insert/tea press gizmo that I could simply use a tea ball and have more room for water and therefore more tea! It works out to be about 40 ounces of tea so I figured I would need 2 of the Mighty Leaf tea bags to make it strong enough. Okay, fine, that means I'll have enough tea bags for 50 days of tea. One morning, after closer inspection of the quality of tea in the tea bags, I realize that perhaps I can get away with just one tea bag and 40 ounces of water. I figure it is worth a shot, worst case scenario, I have a pot of weak tea. Turns out, one tea bag works just fine. Score!