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!
sledding and building bonfires in Montana are the best times during the holidays!
Christmas in New Zealand in the height of summer with my grandma always insisting to cook a traditional British dinner, which meant the house was sweltering hot as she had an old wood burning AGA. I’m sweating just thinking about it. The food was always amazing, but better suited to a winter Christmas!
My favorite holiday memories always began the day after Thanksgiving. As my dad was stringing lights outside, my mom and I would start to make the batches and batches of Christmas cookies. Russian tea cakes, spritz cookies of all shapes and sprinkles, chocolate cookies with a walnut half in the center. And every year we would pick out some new ones to try from the holiday magazines (no internet then!). Oh! and fudge, some with walnuts, some without. Being with my mom as she baked; helping, of course!, were the best times of closeness and learning, of sugar and butter and spices.
My favorite memory has changed over the years… It used to be opening presents with the family. Now that we are all older, we tend to just get together for the holidays. That in itself is the present. So now I have memories of us going on vacations – Mexico, France, Colorado… Which I much prefer!
My favorite holiday memory is when I would watch my grandma cook everything by herself for Christmas dinner. I loved sitting on a little kitchen stool while my siblings and cousins watched tv. She did it with such ease and made it seem so effortless. She stayed calm most of the time, but occasionally would say Hungarian cuss words under her breath when something went wrong. I was so young and didn’t fully realize my love of cooking and baking at the time, but I enjoyed helping out with the smallest of tasks. My grandma passed away about 6 years ago, just as I was finding my way around the kitchen. I’m 23 now and I’ve started cooking all of her hand written recipes to the best of my ability, hoping she would be proud if she was here to taste it. In the past 2 years, I’ve now taken on the task of cooking Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner for my whole family. I like to think that she’s watching me and that she’s proud.
One of my fav memories was driving my family all over our new town in VT and not finding the church for Christmas Eve service. Dejected, we all drove home, stood outside while holding hands and singing carols. It was a nice evening.
My favorite holiday memory is decorating our house with my dad. We always make sure our home is holiday ready!
My favorite Christmas memory is easy! It’d definitely be Cheistmas 2008! You see, I grew up an only child. It was just me and my mom, my father wasn’t a part of my life. Sure I had my grandfather who lived with us part time, my two amazing godfathers and my uncle to be the male influences in my life. But I didn’t have any contact with my father, that is, until January 2008. Right before New Year’s Eve 2007, the idea of my father had been heavy on my mind and I had mentioned it to a friend of mine. He suggested that maybe it was time for me to finally reach out to my father and let him know that I was thinking about him. I took his advice and sent him a certified letter. On Super Bowl Sunday 2008, I received the most wonderful email response from him and was set to meet my father for the first time on Easter Sunday, during my next trip home. That visit was amazing and crazy all at the same time! Looking at my father was like looking at the mirror….and the missing pieces finally clicked! I learned that I was no longer the only child. I learned that not olny did I have 3 brothers, but I also had 2 sister-in-laws, a stepmother AND a nephew! Because I was living in Atlanta and the rest of my family was in DC, I wasn’t able to meet everyone until my trip home for Christmas. On December 23rd, 2008, I met my brothers, stepmother, sisters-in-law and my nephew (who ran up to me and greeting me with a huge hug!) That was THE best Christmas present ever! And was more than I could’ve ever hoped for! Sadly, less than 6 months later, my father passed away from pancreatic cancer, but I still cherish the year and a half that he was in my life and I’m thankful everyday that he shared his side of the family with me!
My favourite holiday memory is waking up early with my husband last year on Christmas day at my parents house. We prepped a classic family breakfast (eggs, bacon, instant noodles), ready for all my younger cousins and brother when they woke up to open presents, and then go straight back to bed.
My favorite holiday memory is being with my family on the December 24t and 25th. On the 24th my mom (she is a chef) and I would always prepare a lot of food. We would make lots of dishes with pork meat (I am Romanian and we eat lots of pork) and all kinds of salads. Back them probably i didn’t appreciate those moments but those very moments made me love food and cooking. And just by helping my mom I learned the joy of cooking for your family.
On the 25th we would always have kind of a potluck with the rest of the family. We would gather to our place or over to my grandma’s house and we would all eat together like a huge, hungry family. We would all bring containers with food that we prepared the other day, and would end up with tons of dishes on the table and we would eat, laugh and spread love. Happy Holidays!