In 1.5 without frames I have gone back to manual mining. Usually just cave now to get AE quartz. My kit is down to just the 9 items in my bar:
power glove - sword/bow/shovel
cobblestone - never know when you need to blocks
fortune 3 + repair 2 thaumium pick
torches
water bucket
silk touch + repair thaumium pick
enderpouch back to AE import chest
enderpouch back to supply chest at base (AE network supplies food, torches, blocks, and village tradables to this pouch)
Steak
Anytime i get full i can just open up the pouch and shift + space click my whole upper inventory back to base. Then i open my other pouch to pull out steak + torches as needed. AE ressupies and i continue on.
I saw an interesting post on a reddit that might be fun to try:
Wand of equal trade + flowers/saplings anything that won't plant on most things underground. Trade on a vein and you get the whole vein and the flowers fall as item entities. Trade on stone and you can reveal a lot of space quickly.
I have a fortune + charging wand, so I might give this a try