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!
….ice skating on my frozen ABOVE GROUND pool when I was a kid in the 60s!
It’s a tie between our annual surf-and-turf Christmas Eve dinner and the crazy, loud gift exchange in my granny’s too-small-to-fit-the-30-plus-people house.
My favorite holiday memory is watching my mom make batches of banana bread for all of my school teachers. She always baked them perfectly and wrapped them to gift to to teachers, relatives, and family friends. We always knew that time of the year was here when we could smell the sweet banana fragrance throughout the house.
My favorite memory would be the Christmas Eve gathering my parents had every year. Our house would be filled with over 100 guests all happy together in a beautifully decorated Victorian house eating and drinking and being merry!
My fave holiday memory is coming downstairs with my Xmas PJs and waking everyone in the house up to gather around the tree! We just sit there for a bit, chatting and taking in how nice everything looks and how lucky we are before diving into presents.
One of my favorite holiday memories was at Disneyland! Our family grew up going away every year for Christmas. It was usually back to visit our grandparents or to Disneyland. After hours upon hours at the park, our family was tired and ready to head back to the hotel. On our way out we managed to find a spot in front of the castle to watch the fireworks! After an impressive display (Disney sure knows how to put on a show!) we along with hundreds of other people were eager to get to the shuttles. People were hurriedly pushing past us to get out of the park and then the music played. Like out of a movie everyone stopped on Main Street and waited listening to the music. Then it came…the fake snow! Everywhere you turned you suddenly saw people laughing and trying to catch the fake snow. It only lasted maybe 10 minutes but for those 10 minutes everyone forgot the chaos that is Disneyland sometimes and stopped to enjoy some snow!
When I was 7, we moved into a new house in a new city just 4 days before Christmas. I remember waking up on Christmas morning and bring so surprised (and relieved) that Santa was able to find our new home and bring us our goodies!
My favorite holiday memory is the first time I went to Colorado with my SO. We took a hike on Christmas afternoon into the hills (mountains) around his parents’ house and when we reached the crest of a hill I turned around and was blown away by a breathtaking view of Pike’s Peak and the Rockies. I just stood there and cried, it was the most magnificent vista I’ve ever seen.
My favorite holiday memory has to be the Christmas I got engaged to my best friend in Costa Rica! My boyfriend’s (now husband) parents moved to Costa Rica to be near his brother and we flew out to see their new dwellings. It was incredible, the amazing people of Costa Rica, the food, the scenery. We were having the time of our lives. On Christmas Day after opening our gifts we started picking up the wrapping paper Ben called me over and said he had one last gift, surrounded by our family he told me how much he loved our life together and he asked me to be his wife. I accepted and then we set out to make the best, most collaborative meal with our new friends we had met there. Everyone who came to dinner was from a different country and brought something to the table that was important to them. We had traditional dishes from Costa Rica, Italy, Argentina, and the United States, it was incredible and something I’ll never forget! Best Christmas ever!
It’s always the same memory–after we get up obscenely early to open gifts (even now my sister will rouse us all at about 6 AM, when every other day of the year you can’t get her up before 10 on weekends) there’s a gentle lull as we bask in the glow of the lights on the tree, our morning fire snapping away, and Christmas music playing as we all read our new books or open packages of trinkets to examine more closely. Then, of course, a nap before a cinnamon roll breakfast. Cozy to the core.