life lesson – Budget Bliss: Bucket List

Practical Magic: Capturing a Jar of Summer

Published on September 7, 2026 by BudgetBlissLeave a comment

It’s Labor Day weekend. The children have returned to school. The leaves have just begun their transition from green to yellow, red, and orange. There’s just the slightest nip in the air. Though not officially here by the calendar, autumn is announcing her impending arrival, armed with pumpkin spice everything and spooky décor.

It’s enough to make anyone feel a bit witchy. And what better way to celebrate than by creating some magic in the kitchen?

Upon my stove boils a curious concoction of preserved summer. A spell sealed away until the time is right, most likely in the midst of winter’s blast, its bright heat pushing back against a blizzard’s howl. The kitchen fills with the sweet smell of fruit and sugar as the mixture bubbles away, slowly transforming from something ordinary into something that, with a little patience and the right ingredients, will become something entirely different.

Yes, armed with a dark brew, this concoction will my guests renew!

I speak, of course, of making jellies, jams, and shrubs, of drying, pickling, canning, and all the other delightful ways humans have devised to capture the bounty of one season and carry it into another.

You will be forgiven, dear reader, if you are not familiar with all the forms of preservation previously listed. I shall assume that you are particularly unfamiliar with “shrubs.” Most people are, and no, it isn’t a bush one plants in one’s garden.

A shrub is a sweet and tart beverage made from a concentrated syrup of fresh fruit, sugar, and vinegar. It is one of the earliest forms of food preservation, and I simply adore adding it to iced tea or using it in homemade cocktails. There is something wonderfully satisfying about taking fruit that is abundant for a brief moment in summer and turning it into something you can enjoy months later.

And, like any good witch, I must be careful with my spells. There is a recipe to follow. Measurements matter. Temperatures matter. Sterilization matters. The jars must be prepared properly, the seals must be checked, and everything must be handled with care. There is a certain amount of magic involved in watching fruit, sugar, heat, and time transform into something completely different, but this is not the sort of magic where one can simply wave a wand and hope for the best. An improperly prepared spell may have unintended consequences.

In this case, those consequences are less likely to involve turning someone into a frog and considerably more likely to involve food poisoning. So I follow the recipe. Carefully.

I measure the sugar. I measure the pectin. I watch the temperature. I stir and wait and watch the bubbles rise and burst. There is a strange satisfaction in following a process developed and refined by generations of people who figured out how to make the harvest last just a little longer. And when the spell is complete, I ladle the glowing mixture into jars and seal them away.

Can I go to the store and buy jam? Absolutely. I can buy pickles (not that I would I happen to hate pickles but you can!). I can buy dried fruit. I can buy salsa and tea and any number of other things I might otherwise make myself.

But there is something to be said for capturing the flavors of locally grown produce and preserving them with your own hands. There is satisfaction in carefully measuring out the ingredients, following the recipe, watching the transformation happen, and eventually opening a jar months later to discover that you have somehow managed to preserve a little piece of summer.

I have canned salsas and spreads. I have pickled lemons in salt water. I’ve dried various vegetables to use in soups later. I’ve even made my own fruit tea from scraps of summer fruit, using things like strawberry tops and apple peels. That last one is particularly delightful on a snowy afternoon. Take the scraps that might otherwise end up in the compost and turn them into a fragrant cup of tea. Add a little honey, curl up somewhere warm, and suddenly January seems considerably less offensive.

And that, dear reader, is where I think food preservation becomes more than simply a frugal hobby. It is a skill.

There is a tendency to think of bucket-list adventures as things that require plane tickets, reservations, expensive equipment, or some dramatic story to tell afterward. We put things like skydiving, visiting exotic countries, climbing mountains, or swimming with sharks on our lists.

And those things can certainly be wonderful. But learning how to do something is an adventure too. Learning to preserve food means acquiring a skill that doesn’t disappear when the experience ends. I can make another batch of jam next summer. I can try a different fruit. I can experiment with a new shrub. I can dry vegetables for another winter’s soup.

The experience becomes something I can return to. That is one of my favourite things about learning new skills. You don’t simply check the box and move on. You take the knowledge with you. Perhaps you’ve always wanted to learn how to bake bread. Maybe you’ve wondered about woodworking, gardening, knitting, pottery, fermenting, playing an instrument, making soap, painting, or any of the countless skills humans have developed over thousands of years.

You don’t have to become an expert. You don’t even have to love it. Try it. Learn something. And if you discover that you enjoy it, you’ve gained something you can carry with you for the rest of your life.

I certainly haven’t become some grand master of food preservation. I don’t have a cellar filled with hundreds of perfectly labelled jars. My kitchen isn’t a scene from a nineteenth-century homestead where I’ve somehow become the keeper of ancient culinary wisdom. I’m simply someone who enjoys making things.

And I particularly enjoy making things that allow me to cheat time. That may be the real magic of preservation. Summer is fleeting. The strawberries disappear. The peaches soften. The tomatoes eventually stop producing. The herbs die back. The garden goes quiet. But I can capture some of it. I can put summer into a jar. Then I can tuck that jar away and wait. Months later, when the trees are bare and the wind is howling against the windows, I can pull it from the pantry. I can spread it across warm toast. I can stir preserved fruit into something I’m baking. I can pour a little shrub into a glass of iced tea and remember the heat of July.

And I don’t have to keep all the magic to myself. I spread it around, too. Slightly intended pun. Jams, jellies and other homemade treats make wonderful holiday gifts. There is something special about receiving something someone made themselves. It says, I thought of you when I made this; I took the time to make something; I put this away months ago and remembered you when it was time to bring it out. And perhaps most importantly, it says, I hope this makes your day a little brighter. That feels like a much more meaningful gift than something grabbed from a shelf five minutes before Christmas.

So as autumn settles in and the farmers’ markets begin their final abundance of the season, perhaps consider adding a little practical magic to your own bucket list. You don’t need a cauldron. You don’t need a pointy hat. Although, I always love a good hat, bonus points if it’s festive. A hairnet will probably suffice. Head to your local farmers’ market. Find something delicious. Learn how to preserve it. Follow the recipe carefully. Respect the science. Don’t accidentally poison your loved ones. Then seal away a little bit of summer.

Because when winter finally arrives, when the snow is falling and the cold seems determined to seep into your bones, you can reach into your pantry and open a jar. And there it is. Summer. Waiting for you. A little magic you made yourself.

The Family We Gathered Into

Published on August 23, 2026 by BudgetBlissLeave a comment

Dear reader, some of the most important traditions in my life aren’t traditions that my family created.

At least, not my family by blood.

They began with a group of college friends of my parents who, somewhere along the way, decided that friendship deserved to be celebrated. Perhaps because most of them came from dysfunctional families, so they formed a family of their own and it was into this family that I was born. Decades later, the gatherings continue. The faces have changed over the years. Some people have joined us, others have moved away or passed on, and the locations have occasionally changed. But the traditions remain, some remain untouched from their beginnings. Others have slowly morphed or rolled into other traditions.

Three times a year, give or take, we gather.

St. Patrick’s Day brings together those who share an Irish heritage, or perhaps simply an appreciation for good food, good drink, and the opportunity to sing Irish folk songs at increasingly enthusiastic volumes. We used to gather for Mid-summer’s and Mid-winter’s but they were rolled into St. Patrick’s when Mid-winter’s kept getting snowed out and our host for Mid-summer was no longer able to accommodate everyone camping on his property. And while I miss the bonfire where Jay would dress up like Merlin and entertain me with colored flames, I am a bit old for that now. I would want to be the one dressed up as a wizard.

The Garden Party marks the end of summer with music, food, lawn games, and sometimes dancing. It is the sort of afternoon where nobody seems particularly concerned about what time it is because there is always another game to play, another conversation to join, another drink to refill. It goes long into the night and often into the next day for those who choose to stay over. Each year is a different theme ranging from Morocco to China, from France to Mexico and even different decades.

Then comes the Holiday Feast, an amalgamation of Thanksgiving and Christmas. We give thanks for the blessings of the year, eat an enormous meal, sing Christmas carols, and inevitably discover whatever puzzle has been devised for us that year. The puzzles have ranged considerably in ambition. Some years it has been little more than a worksheet. Other years have involved elaborate murder mysteries requiring us to search the house and garden for clues. Apparently, gratitude and Christmas cheer are insufficient entertainment for this particular group. We also require an opportunity to investigate fictional homicide.

There is usually a familiar menu as well. If you attend either St. Patrick’s or Holiday Feast you never need to check the menu, you simply know.

And then there is the house. For most of my childhood, these gatherings took place at my godparents’ home, a house originally built in the 1700s and expanded in the 1800s. It is the sort of house that seems to remember the people who have passed through it.

There is an old wood stove tucked into the hearth room. The cellar contains an Irish “pub” that my godfather quite literally dug out by hand, enlarging the space until there was enough room for our heads. The rough stone walls make you feel as though you have somehow stepped out of Pennsylvania and landed in the old country.

Every room has its own history. Every corner contains a memory. There are whispered ghost stories. There are stories about people who aren’t there anymore. There are objects whose significance I probably wouldn’t understand if I hadn’t spent so many years seeing them in the same places.

I can mark my childhood by these parties. At first, there was the children’s table. Playing with my siblings and my “god-sister”. Eventually, I graduated to the adults’ table. There was the first time I was old enough to drink at one of the parties. I learned crochet. I learned to play bocce ball. I learned how to mix drinks from our resident “expert” bartender. I listened to stories about places I had never been and people I had never met.

These people were my aunts and uncles, even though most of them weren’t related to me at all. One of them eventually became my college professor, which created the rather peculiar situation of having to remind myself not to call her Aunt Val in class. But the others taught me things, too. Not in the formal sense of sitting me down for a lesson, but through years of conversations and arguments. They brought their own adventures with them and regaled us with stories. They introduced me to art, music, philosophy, history, and different ways of understanding the world.

We argued about politics, religion, economics, and just about everything else people are generally advised not to discuss over dinner. And they made me think. Perhaps that is one of the greatest gifts these gatherings gave me. They showed me that learning doesn’t only happen in classrooms. Sometimes it happens around a crowded dinner table with people who have lived long enough to have stories to tell and opinions they are more than willing to defend.

As a child, I mostly listened. As I grew older, I began participating. Eventually, I became one of the adults arguing across the table. And somewhere along the way, I stopped being a child who attended these parties and became one of the people who helped carry the traditions forward.

That transition happened so gradually that I don’t think anyone announced it. There was no ceremony. No one said, Congratulations, you are now an adult member of the ritual. I simply found myself there. That may be the strange magic of tradition. The first time you experience something, it is an event. The tenth time, it is familiar. The twentieth time, you know what comes next. And eventually, you don’t even have to discuss it. The parties become almost like a dance. Everyone knows the steps. We know when we eat. We know when the games happen. We know when the drinks come out. We know which songs will be sung and, more importantly, when everyone is expected to join in. Nobody has to announce the choreography. We simply know it. And yet the dance is never quite the same. The people change. The stories change. Someone brings a new dish. Someone learns a new song. A child who once sat at the kids’ table is suddenly old enough to pour drinks. Someone who was always there is now conspicuously absent.

The ritual remains, even as the people within it change. I think that is why traditions matter so much. We often talk about experiences as though their value comes from novelty. We put new places, new activities, and new adventures on our bucket lists because there is something wonderful about doing something for the first time. But there is another kind of magic in doing something for the hundredth time. Traditions give us continuity. They give us something to return to. They create a shared history that stretches beyond any one person and allows memories to accumulate over generations. They remind us that our lives are not isolated events but part of a much longer story.

And perhaps most importantly, they create belonging. These people didn’t become my family because we share a last name or DNA. They became my family because we kept showing up. Year after year. Party after party. Song after song. We cultivated rituals together until they became part of the fabric of our lives. That is something worth putting on a bucket list, too.

Not necessarily a particular holiday or a particular meal. Instead, consider creating something that you can return to. A yearly garden party. A friends’ Thanksgiving. A monthly dinner. An annual camping trip. A ridiculous family competition. A holiday tradition that makes absolutely no sense to anyone outside your groupIt doesn’t have to be elaborate. It simply has to be yours.

Someday, you may look back and realize that you aren’t merely remembering the parties. You’re remembering your childhood. Your friendships. The people who taught you things. The people who watched you grow. The people who became family simply because they kept showing up. And perhaps that is one of the greatest adventures of all. Not discovering somewhere new, but building something worth returning to.