I personally use turkey jerky and lumber jack meat on stick. Excess meat scraps go to charged meat for lard and then charred meat in the fish traps. It gets me more than enough blue right now. In addition from the hunting you can make bone beads easily. The bone beads can be used for mining points. From some of your other posts your biles seem comparable to my own so I think that should tie you over till you can mass produce tea like the others. I have tried the tea route and it just seemed expensive since I am unable to self produce from orchards.
That is just what I have been doing. With a couple turkey jerky and about 6 - 10 meat on a stick I can mine for about 45m - 1h. Kill a couple deer and your good.
Besides JC said someone working their mine day in and day out will find their mine down fast but a person working it an hour here or there will find it faster with less hours of work just over a greater span of days.