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!
Every year I go to my grandparents’ house in Southern Illinois. Their area is so peaceful and different from the noisy city and I am always so excited to go there every year. Usually, I’ll get my white christmas and a quintessential American Christmas Day. Also, I’m used to having younger cousin who are so much more excited than I am and it is such a joy to watch them open presents and be amazed!
Really… my favorite part of the year!
my first white xmas in america!
Three years ago, my boyfriend surprised me and came home for Christmas break. He had been living abroad for 6 months and I hadn’t expected to see him for another 3 months. Best Christmas present ever!
My favorite holiday memory is watching fireworks in the Philippines when I was 15 on New Years
My favorite holiday memory is from a few years ago, the first Christmas where I was in charge of cooking my family’s Christmas dinner after so many years of my mom doing the cooking for us. It felt really nice to be able to give her a break and experience the joy of putting together a special holiday meal for the most important loved ones in my life! It was a little daunting because I made a huge prime rib roast, but it came out awesome and was just a nice family milestone – being able to give back to my mom! I’m looking forward to more Christmas dinners, especially ones where we can both share the love through our cooking. :)
My favorite holiday moments are during our big family/extended family Christmas every year in Alaska. We have Christmas dinner around 3pm and then gather around the tree and pass out presents. We don’t get to see each other often these days, but we can at least get together on Christmas day for food, gifts, and catching up.
My favorite winter holiday memory is when we had a white x’mas one year. I live in Dallas and white x’mas’s don’t happen often. I wished for a white x’mas that year and it just happened to snow on x’mas eve when i was at a friend’s x’mas party. We all got out of the house and started playing in the snow. It was a fun party & great x’mas :)
Growing up, I had a single mom that made every Christmas as special as she could with the little that we had. My brother and I always had gifts under our tree although it was not the gifts that we really wanted. One Christmas this all changed. My favorite holiday memory was when I was 10 years old waking up on Christmas morning to a colorful blinking white tree, the smell of banana pancakes and bacon and tons of newly wrapped presents under the tree. There were only a couple of gifts when my brother and I drifted off to sleep in anticipation so this was a shock. As I opened present after present in excitement, I quickly realized that I was having a BARBIE CHRISTMAS! My mother had purchased multiple different Barbie proffessionals, her friends, her sister Kelly, and even Ken. I had the Barbie camper van, Barbie’s dreamhouse and a her red corvet. I even had the Barbie car that I could drive! My mother passed away a few months later, this was the best Christmas Ever!
I studied abroad for a year in college so it was my first Christmas away from home. As the holidays approached things were a bit sad. Then I was invited to stay in Heidelberg with an elderly woman. She and her family were incredibly warm and welcoming. We visited the Christmas market, attended Handel’s Messiah at a cathedral and decorated her tree with candle holders. It’s shocking that we used real candles but the tree was so lovely when we lit them each night. I can still taste the Weihnachtskuchen that we baked together.
I was just talking about this with my Mom on our weekly phone call… She’s making gingerbread men cookies this morning.. One year, we were in the kitchen doing the same thing. We cut, re-rolled the scraps, cut more little men out, re-rerolled the scraps, cut again…. We laughed because that dough seemed to never end, and we ended up spending hours in the kitchen – until the wee hours of the morning. Cutting, rerolling, cutting, laughing hysterically like you do when you’re punchy tired. Super great memory for us.