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 girls were about 5 and 6 and would NOT go to sleep on Christmas Eve. I had a door bow with bells on it that I wasn’t using. I took it around the back of the house where their bedroom was, and rang it like a crazy person. I then snuck back in the front door and went upstairs to “do laundry”. They came flying out of the room telling me they heard Santa!!!! I said well he can’t come if you’re awake so you’d better go to sleep so he can come back! The insane excitement and belief of 2 little girls was SO much fun to witness!
My favourite memory would be trying eggnog and baking the Pillsbury Ready-to-Bake Christmas cookies with my older brother for Santa. We’re an Asian family – Vietnamese, like yourself – and so our folks never really subscribed to most of the Christmas traditions, including Christmas lights up around the house, drinking eggnog/mulled wine/cider, or leaving milk and cookies by the chimney for Santa Claus. However, one year my brother and I begged to simulate some of these, so we were allowed to buy eggnog and make cookies. My parents were, of course, the ones who had to actually eat the cookies, and they weren’t very fond of Western confections, so that was a pretty significant sacrifice on their parts. I remember feeling like it did bring us all together, though.
A fond memory I have is all the ornaments that were on my tree when I was a child. Loved looking at them all and even though it was a small table top tree, it seemed huge to me as a little kid.
My favorite holiday memory is my parents’ annual party on Christmas day-we always have posole and chile rellenos, and the entire neighborhood gathers to light luminarias! It’s the best.
Travelling to Canada last year and having a beautiful white Christmas for the first time was an excellent memory. Despite the fact I got snowed in during the Polar Vortex and missed four days of work, it was still really special.
One of my favorite holiday memory that usually happened every year is baking cookies with my mom and grandma. My grandma always used to make us hot chocolate while baking, and we would watch funny Christmas movies. We would end up baking into the next morning, and make breakfast as a treat for all our hard work.
A couple years ago, my family and some family friends went to Las Vegas and spent witer break there. We spent all the days going to the different places around and exploring every corner. We ate at many great restaurants and have a lot of fun. I never wanted to leave but when we finally did, I remember that it was the best Christmas I ever had.
Our Christmas is an all out party. Each year we rotate houses & have a sit down dinner for our immediate family which tallies in over 60 people! Last years Christmas at my sisters proved to be one of the best with a Christmas photobooth, Shotski, flash mob during dinner led by my parents & a dance party with young and old alike til 3am. Blessed!
“Fishy Pet” appeared under the tree at Christmas when I was 3. My parents had set up and plugged in a fish tank with a motor filter under the Christmas tree, complete with my first pet! It would have been much easier for them to set up the tank somewhere else, but it was pretty magical to think that Santa had hand-carried “Fishy Pet” and carefully placed the tank under the tree.
When I was little, all my siblings and my mom would spend one weekend just where we would bake a massive amount of cookies for ourselves, our classrooms, and my parent’s work. We would take over the entire kitchen and dining room getting things together, mixing, adding sprinkles, packaging, etc. And we were always sure to make fun of whoever did the worst job at using the cookie cutters or adding the sprinkles. We would also spend the same night decorating the house for the holidays. It was always nice because no matter how many other things we had going on or holiday parties we had to attend we would always spend that day together.