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!
Growing up, my parents had a rule that we couldn’t wake them up on Christmas day until the sun was up. Needless to say, wintertime in North America doesn’t exactly make for early sunrises. So my siblings and I would wake up early and go sit on the couch in the living room and just stare at the tree for a while and then go back to bed. One year, my youngest brother woke us all up at 4am and we snuck downstairs and took apart our stockings. Toothbrushes, nuts, Andes mints, and oranges as usual, but it was so exciting. And then we tried to put them all back together exactly like they were before and snuck back to bed. Sitting there with my siblings in the light of the Christmas tree is one of my favorite Christmas memories.
When my sisters and I were little (before our brother was born), we’d do everything we could think of to stay awake long enough on Christmas eve to catch Santa in the act! We could never make it past about ten without falling asleep, despite poking each other and asking over and over “psst….are you awake?….”
Much to our mother’s chagrin, one of us would inevitably wake up around four o’clock in the morning and wake the others. We’d all sneak downstairs and stare in awe at the pile of presents under the beautiful, sparkling tree, picking up packages, shaking them, and trying to guess the contents. We knew we couldn’t wake Mom up yet, so we’d spend the excruciating three-or-so hours coming up with a game plan of opening presents in a particular order, and sneaking just a few candies from our stockings.
Once seven o’clock rolled around it was okay to wake Mom, so one of us would start the coffee (she taught us young!), and the other two would try to coax her out of bed. Then the mayhem could begin! I’m sure she was relieved when, by noon, we’d all be napping, giving her a brief break from squealing girls, and a moment to catch her sanity before supper.
When we were little my mom would make a huge batch of sugar cookie dough and pull down all the cookie cutters and sprinkles and candies and we would go hog wild cutting and decorating sugar cookies to give away as present. I’m fairly certain we only ever made 1/2 the batch, since the remaining dough was snuck continuously through the day long event. We’d be covered in colored sugar and our teeth and fingers would be stained. The kitchen was a mess and we probably used an entire roll of wax paper trying to roll out the dough. But it was awesome. I would give anything for one of those sugar induced bellyaches again.
My favorite holiday memory is baking cookies and making homemade wreaths with my mom every year. I wish I had more time to do crafts now, but I do still bake and make other treats for the holidays every year.
My favorite holiday memory, or rather tradition, is one that started as we ushered in a new member of our family – my wonderful stepmom. Every christmas eve since she joined our family, we each open up one present together – a fresh set of pjs. Then we all change into them and make Irish coffees to sip on while listening to christmas music. It’s a simple traditional that’s been a perfect addition to our christmas celebration.
One of my favorite holiday memory is watching my grandma make cinnamon rolls. I used to love watching the soft dough being stretched and stretched. She used to make the best sugar cookies too. She never used a recipe card and I was so amazed at how natural she was in the kitchen.
My favorite holiday memory is that after all of the presents had been opened and the wrapping paper cleared away, my dad and I would spend the whole afternoon building something epic: K’Nex ferris wheels or roller coasters, Lego space monorails, Marbleworks towers or elaborate slot car race tracks. Even though I’m 27 now, if we’re at my parent’s for Christmas, every few years we pull something out again – we’re just a lot faster now. :)
(Favorite food memory is eating my dad’s hashbrowns – golden and buttery, crispy on the outside and soft in the middle – they’re pretty time intensive and therefore were usually a once or twice a year treat and my number one request on Christmas mornings.)
So, this was Thanksgiving, but still wintery cold outside! It’s tradition in my family that we celebrate Thanksgiving in my parent’s old barn (no animals, just parties). Usually around 70 people come and its tons of fun. Despite the cold, my cousins (8-18 yrs) take advantage of every opportunity for fun while at the farm – being urban-raisied, they don’t get that chance very often. One year, they had the 4-wheelers out, riding all over the property (it was FREEZING btw), and one of them landed himself, and the 4-wheeler belly up in the pond. Thank god he was okay, and my parent’s, the whole family were very understanding and forgiving and all of that because again, thank god he was okay. But the 4-wheeler? My dad decided it could wait until after we’d all eaten to take care of it.. it wasn’t going anywhere. Well my brother (in his 30’s with 3 boys himself) thought differently. He went up to my parent’s house, put on a pair of my dad’s shorts and dove into the freezing pond (IMPROMPTU POLAR PLUNGE!!!) and tried to pull the 4-wheeler out himself.. lol. Well long story short, it ended up taking about 14 grown-ass men, another tractor and a winch to pull the thing out.. but it all worked out and is now an awesome memory for instant hilarity. LOVE!
My favorite holiday memory is growing up in southern California, where it never snows, and then seeing snow for the first time when my parents took me skiing. The backstory there is that my parents are immigrants from Taiwan, and when they moved to the US they were fairly broke (not a new immigrant story), but they were very intrigued by skiing so they decided to learn at night because it was cheaper. However, they didn’t have any ski clothes, so they wore jeans and heavy sweaters and were soaked (because of all the falling) and freezing by the end of it! However, they developed a penchant for it and taught my brother and I how to ski at an early age.
I don’t know that I have one favorite holiday memory…but it’s the time of year I looks forward to the most. The ambiance that surrounds the holidays is unmatched during the rest of the year. I am so looking forward to going up in just a few days now, baking cookies with my mom, reading under the lights of the christmas tree and being with my family.