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 Mom’s side of the family has a tradition where a white almond is hidden in a pan of a rice dessert. All of the family members put a dollar into the pot for the winner. The last Christmas that my Grandma was alive, we planted the almond in her helping. She had never won the pot o’ money before. The look on her face when she found the almond is one that I’ll never forget.
My favourite holiday memory was the one I spent with my boyfriend’s family. I’d only been dating him for a month and a half, and I was leaving the country to visit my family for Christmas. But my boyfriend’s mother really wanted me to celebrate Christmas of some sort with them and so she threw an early Christmas family dinner, where we did all the traditional things. Growing up, Christmas was never that much of a celebration in my family, as much as I wanted it to be, and my boyfriend’s mother knew that and so she planned the whole night with the “typical” traditions. We made a gingerbread house and decorated the tree, there was Christmas music playing. It was something like a dream because it felt so foreign to celebrate it in this way, but also amazing because I felt so loved that she would want to plan something like this just so I could be a part of it.
On Christmas Day my family used to make meals and we spend the Christmas together. We didn’t do anything big but being with them was the best thing and spending it with them is the most memorable thing. The love and joy all together. We also go watch the lights at the la zoo. The bright colorful lights were so pretty all around and sitting all together in the car gave us warmth as we watch the lights driving through.
As a kid, watching my mom in the kitchen on Christmas Eve prepping stuffing for dinner the next day. Unaware she was being observed, humming happily as she tore bread apart and diced herbs; following the unwritten, unmeasured recipe handed down to her by her mother, and her mother before her. And that is the magic ingredient, the best gourmet stuffing in the world can never compete with a simple family recipe made with loving hands and a warm heart.
One of my favorite, and especially funny, holiday memories was the year it snowed so much that they cancelled Christmas church service! Of course, everyone wishes and hopes for a white Christmas! Yet no one really anticipates so much snow that we can’t even make it out of the house to get to church! My siblings and I were raised on Catholic church services not only on Christmas day, but also every Sunday of the year. It was always such a struggle to go to Christmas service because all we wanted to do was stay home and open gifts, duh! But even worse, mom & dad made us wait until AFTER church to open the Christmas gifts. Well, the year it snowed so much that all church services were cancelled on Christmas day, we were ecstatic! Except we soon found out that mom & dad fully intended on having us sit on the couch and watch a church service being televised!! It was a painful hour and it was so difficult to hold back our giggles. For every laugh that we let out, we got death glares from our parents. The upside was that we were still in our pajamas and able to eat pancakes DURING church. It turned out to be awesome and it was sure a year to remember ;)
My favorite holiday memory was a yearly event. My grandmother always made waffles on Christmas eve and I looked forward to that dinner every year. Now I continue the tradition with my own family. Thank you for the wonderful giveaway.
Erin
There is one special memory that comes to mind. I grew up with 17 cousins on my mother’s side of the family. When we were kids, we would always have cousin gatherings. One winter, we decided to go ice skating together. We packed into multiple cars and drove to the ice skating rink. We warmed ourselves up throughout the day with hot chocolate and just had a good time. We are all much older now, some with our own families already, but I miss those childhood days!
We had a “christmas village” of simple hollowed ceramic houses that we kept adding to each year, and we would light a tealight in each of them every night in December, and it gradually became sort of a nightly ritual for my family over time. Now that I’m married I’ve started my own village, and it brings back all the happy memories each night, along with all the new ones we’re creating.
One of my favorite Christmas memories is actually a very recent one! Three years ago, my boyfriend and I spent our first Christmas together in Wichita, which is where all of his family lives. I didn’t know if they’d like me (a little Chinese gal from California) and I had no idea what to expect – I grew up having hot pot on Christmas!
On the way to the airport, he warmed me that Christmas with his family hasn’t changed in decades. Every year it’s the same thing.
On Christmas Eve, we had dinner at grandma’s, where we sang carols, looked for the plastic baby Jesus (whoever finds him wins!), lit the advent candles, and enjoyed grandma’s ham! Christmas Day was spent in Little River, population 500 people. This is where his mom is from. Everyone on his mom’s side is goofy and hilarious! We went around opening gifts, and I was so surprised to see that all of his cousins, aunts, and uncles had a gift for me. The funny thing is – the gifts were addressed to Carol – not Connie – because Karl’s mom mumbles over the phone :p
We go to Kansas for Christmas every year now, and I just love spending the holidays with my new family!!
My favorite holiday memory is when my family met my wife’s family and we enjoyed Christmas together