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!
The chimney fire at my parents’ on Christmas Eve. My mom frantically on the phone with the 911 operator while my dad calmly reacted and took care of the fire. My mom screaming “everybody out! She (the orator) says ‘everybody out’!!!!!!” Dad:”well she’s not here!” …mom went outside by herself.
Since my family doesn’t celebrate Christmas, I will do a Chinese new year one! My favorite holiday memory was basically eating a massive banquet with the extended family (usually 20+ people) on new year’s eve, the adults will be drinking and having tons of fun, and we were be at the kids table doing silly kids stuff, and there will be so much food and it will taste amazing, and you are completely stuffed when you are done…and afterwards the adults will play mah-jong into the night, and since it’s new years, the kids get to stay up late too, so us kids will literally play until we pass out, which will always be like 2am or something haha. Anyways good times :)
My sister and I have a tradition of traveling to my mom’s house and making fudge together the night before Christmas. For some reason, it always such a stressful process that we end up snipping at each other the entire time so that’s also now part of the tradition. Two years ago, I was sick and not in the mood to accept my sister’s invitation to “go make fudge and get in a fight” so I opted to sit on the couch in the same room while she did the entire process herself. After grumbling to “herself” for me to overhear the entire time, she finished the process only to realize an hour later that the fudge hadn’t set yet. Turns out she forgot to add an ingredient to it was essentially ruined (edible but more of a raw chocolate dip). She stopped grumbling after that.
I know that probably less warm and fuzzy that you were looking for, but it never fails to put a smile on my face!
My favorite Christmas memory is making cookies at my grandmother’s house with all of the other grand kids. We each had our own apron and would ice and decorate cookies…or eat them :) It is one of my favorite memories!
one of my favorite winter holiday memories is when my husband and i went to cut down our own christmas tree for the first time. being jewish (but not very observant) i never had a REAL christmas tree so when we bought our first house i knew we had to have a real one. we were living in vermont, it was a snowy, cold day and we drove to the tree farm. i must have spent a half hour walking around looking for the perfect tree and then my husband cut it down. then we went inside the barn and had hot chocolate, hot cider and donuts! then we put it in our pickup truck and drove it home.
My family doesn’t celebrate Christmas, but years ago we lived next door to an elderly Italian woman who called herself my honorary grandmother. She gave me little presents and such all year, but at Christmas it was especially a lot. She would also cook dinner for my entire family, teaching us how to make ravioli from scratch and how to cook polenta. We would all cook dinner Christmas Eve, and then the next day we would all head over to her son’s house for dinner. Although we moved and we don’t see her anymore, I still remember how included she made us feel when we were just an immigrant family who didn’t celebrate any winter holidays.
My most memorable Christmas moment was when I was about the age of 7. It was Christmas Eve and my parents had put me and my sister to bed. After they went to sleep I got up and went to the living room where the Christmas tree was. There were so many presents!! I was so excited, I thought all of the presents were for me. I began to open all of the presents with my little flash light I was holding. After I had opened almost all of the gifts my parents come walking in And saw me painting a picture with the new paint set Santa had brought me. I said to my parents ” look at all the stuff Santa brought me ” The only thing they could do was laugh. Meanwhile my little sister wasn’t to happy that I had opened her gifts too!!
My favorite Christmas memory was while I was in the Air Force that weekend I drove down on the 23rd from South Carolina and spent the 23rd going into Christmas Eve with my mom in Mississippi, then drove from Mississippi to Florida to spend Christmas Eve going into Christmas with my sister and my niece and nephew. Finished Christmas and came home and went back to work on the 26th. Crazy weekend of driving but was worth it to see my family.
I remember staying up WAY too late for little kids and watching the front window of our house that was perfectly aligned to reflect the Christmas tree and seeing my parents place all of the gifts. My siblings and I thought that we were so sneeky. Laying on out bellies, telling each other to shut up as we audibly gasped at eat present being brought out and arguing who we thought the biggest box was for.
Of course, we (almost) always got caught and were yelled at to get back in bed.
Favourite holiday memory is putting up the tree! We have a tradition of adding a new ornament to the tree every year– usually it’s something from a trip far away or something unique we found. Every christmas is like going through a little memory box.