It’s giveaway time! It’s a massive one guys and I’m pretty excited! For the past week or so I’ve been featuring recipes using Staub, Shun, Cuttingboard.com, Finex, and Kitchen Aid and now’s the time to finally bundle everything up and give it all away. Well, not literally, because you’re actually going to win new items, so there’s no real bundling, just figurative bundling.
win this staub!
I hope you’ve been following along – so far I’ve made Slow Braised Japanese Chashu Pork, Mini Puff Pastry Roses, Caramel Corn and Rice Krispie Mix, and Mint Snowman Marshmallows, but with these giveaway items you can make pretty much anything, which is perfect for the holiday season.
win this shun knife and cuttingboard.com boo’s block!
I love food – as I’m sure you know – and one of my favorite Christmas memories is of me, my brother, and Christmas chocolates. As little kids, come the first of December, we would get chocolate advent calendars. I still see them around now: those thin cardboard drugstore boxes featuring a Christmas picture with tiny numbered windows and chocolates hiding behind them. My brother and I lived for that moment at the end of the day when we got to pry open the cardboard for our long awaited treat. Our eager fingers would melt the chocolate ever so slightly as we tried to eat our chocolates as slowly as possible.
win this finex cast iron pan!
One year, we got it in our heads that we didn’t want to wait. We snuck our calendars down to the basement – it was cold and dark down there and I didn’t like it but my brother convinced me it was the best place to hide – and ate every single chocolate. We ate the entire month of December. And the thing is, we did it in a gentle, artful way where we could close back the windows so that at a casual glance, you couldn’t tell that the calendar was ravaged.
win this kitchen aid!
Maybe it was the sugar-high making us crazy, but we totally thought we got away with it. That is, until it was time for our nightly ritual with our parents. Needless to say, there was no chocolate treat that night. Or the next night, or the next. But, it was okay, because come Christmas morning, there were still presents under the tree. Apparently, our chocolate binge didn’t leave us on Santa’s naughty list, which was a huge relief, because, presents.
These days I’m more into giving than receiving so I couldn’t resist putting together this giveaway for you! I wish I could send everyone a Christmas present but since I can’t, I thought I’d do the next best thing and giveaway some of my favorite things. So, let me know your favorite holiday memory and maybe you’ll be the lucky reader who wins! Good luck!
Giveaway: I’ve teamed up with some of my favorite brands to do a massive giveaway. One lucky reader will win:
Staub 4 Quart Round Cocotte
Shun 6-inch Dual Core Utility Knife
Cuttingboard.com Boos Block Walnut 20×15 Cutting Board
Finex 10-inch Cast Iron Pan
Kitchen Aid Artisan Design Series 5-Quart Stand Mixer w/Glass Bowl in Pearl Silver
To enter: Leave a comment on the blog with your favorite winter holiday memory. I want to hear ALL the details! I’ll randomly choose a winner and notify them through email. Open to US residents only. (Sorry international friends, only American companies agreed to this one!) If you’d like some extra entries use the widget below to follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. Contest ends December 21st at 12pm PST. Good luck!
The giveaway is closed! I’ll be announcing the winner in the next week or so after reading through all of the comments. Thank you everyone who entered! There are some beautiful memories here!
Update: Congrats Chelsea, you won! Look for an email from me shortly!
My favorite holiday memory is the action of my big family opening presents. Even though we are all adults, my wonderful stepmom still labels our presents under a pseudonym, use in case we want to try and figure it out. :). Every year, without fail, she forgets who was named what. We each open an incorrect gift and then she has to reorganize. At first, it was annoying. As I have gotten older, I realize that I love it, specifically because of the warm fuzzy memory. And knowing that she enjoys it as well.
I’ll do 2 memories, one is a holiday one and one is specifically a winter holiday one.
First: I grew up in Hawaii, so winter was never really winter… But my favorite holiday memory is actually a tradition I try to keep up when I can even now. On New Year’s morning, we wake up before the crack of dawn and take a thermos full of hot chocolate (or coffee) and some kind of snack (usually my mom’s kimbap…these days, I’m more likely to make–or buy!–cinnamon rolls) to the beach, and then we’d jog and jump around to shake off the cold (it was still kinda cold early in the morning, even in Hawaii) while waiting for the sun to rise.
The second memory is during my time living in LA (I know, still not very wintery, but more wintery than Hawaii!). We had a series of orphan Christmas parties on Christmas day for all of our friends who were staying in the area rather than going home for Christmas. I started the day at my Malaysian friends’ home, attempting (and failing) to make Martha Stewart’s croquembouche (the choux pastry puffs were great, the stacking them with spun sugar part, not so much), a wine-poached pear dessert, and some other fancy things, went to an Australian friend’s house and helped make pavlova, and finally ended out the day eating grocery store sheet cake that said “Happy birthday Jesus!” on it. What a fun day.
following on pinterest as well :)
also i follow you on instagram!
Getting up at the crack of dawn to open our presents so we could THEN go to granny’s and open presents, THEN go to grandma’s to finish the afternoon out with dinner attended by all of my close family… GOLD!
When I was little my parents let me and my best friend open 1 gift on christmas eve. When we were about 9 years old we opened the best gifts ever – Spice Girls headset microphones. I love that I still have a polaroid picture of us singing into our new mics and throwing up peace signs :)
I was born in Taiwan so perhaps because of the culture we didn’t really celebrate “the holidays” or “Christmas”. But I remember when I was around six, my parents brought home a little artificial Christmas tree (that stood maybe 4 feet tall) so my sister and I could have a real Christmas for the first time. Our apartment at the time was not very large so the tree was squished into the corner and we decorated the tree with some cheap lights and a cardboard star I had made as the tree topper. My sister and I were so excited that we actually had a Christmas tree. Then my parents surprised us both Christmas morning with new toys! Needless to say, I was over the moon with my first “real Christmas”. Super thankful and grateful for my parents who put in the effort to create such a magical morning for us. It wasn’t much but it’s definitely my favorite memory.
P.S. I follow you on Instagram! Your time in Europe and (especially) London looks amazing. I’ve also been to Sketch and had their afternoon tea as well. London is one of my favorite cities. Enjoy your time there! My Instagram username is iamsofaaa. :)
My favorite memory as a child was going to the lake one year for christmas. We always went to the lake in the summer, never the winter, so I was a nice experience. It was my first time seeing snow. It was nice to have a white chirstmas.
jslbrown2009 at aol dot com
I loved going to my cousins house – it was a huge white house and they always had a big buffet and an enormous white christmas tree in their kitchen. It reminded me of the movie home alone for some reason.
Favorite holiday memory would probably be putting up the Christmas tree and decorating it every year – the way the yearly tradition transitioned from something I watched, to something I participated in, and then to something I helped my younger siblings with really demonstrated how life was changing every year.
My favorite holiday memories all include helping my Mom make huge batches of latkes and then eating them faster than she could get them out of the pan.
Favorite holiday memory, it’s probably my earliest Christmas memory but I remember my mom waking me up and saying “There’s snow on the ground!” I jumped up to go outside and it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Everything was covered in a beautiful white snow and it looked like it came out of a fairytale. We made so much food and sat by the fire watching Christmas movies. This is one of my favorite memories with my family and everything was just perfect that day.