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!
Drinking peppermint dark hot chocolate at home in Singapore with the AC full blast =P
favourite holiday memory – my first year with my husband’s family, sitting around the christmas tree and opening stocking gifts and presents. My family doesn’t do a lot of presents, so at 27, I felt like a kid again opening up everything! None of them were big gifts – they were all small little things and surprises (i.e. food gifts), but those were the most fun!
My favorites memories have always been when I help my mother cook Christmas dinner. We always tried to make something new every year. Regardless of the out come of the food we always had a great time doing it.
Maybe not my favorite memory, but definitely one that stands out — every year, my mom used to get a grocery store birthday cake for baby Jesus (that literally said “Happy Birthday, Jesus!”), and we’d sing happy birthday to Jesus and blow the candles out.
Coming from a family with some major sweet tooths, I secretly think it was just an excuse to eat more cake.
My boyfriend and I pick out a tiny christmas tree every year to match our tiny apartment and decorate it together on my birthday (which usually follows thanksgiving). We also exchange ornaments every year!
Now as an adult, I live in Texas, but I grew up in Colorado. I so miss the winters and the snow, but still get to go every Christmas. I have special memories of bundling up to go sledding and drinking hot chocolate and eating chocolate chip cookies when we returned home. Or making a wonderful Christmas Eve dinner to enjoy with Christmas music in the background, and sometimes even snow outside! I get to go back next week – I can’t wait!
My favorite winter holiday memory would be two years ago when I successfully made a turkey all by myself for Thanksgiving and it was a bacon wrapped turkey! I remember spending weeks looking up tips and recipes, making a wet brine in a huge plastic bag and it took up half of my fridge for a whole week and then waking up at 4AM to put that sucker in the oven. I was so proud to serve it to my family because we’ve never had turkey for the holidays until I decided to take on the challenge. It was an awesome turkey.
This one is easy because it’s recent, last Christmas actually.
My sister had just moved into a big new house, one big enough for all of the children to have plenty of space to play away from us adults while we got things together. My sister and I had spent days and days baking treats and had them all set up on the counters for after dinner, which was late, so the kids kept asking for some. Dinner was small and light since dessert was so epic and after we had gotten over the food coma, we started opening gifts and assembling them for the kids. Somehow this ended up with my sister and I chasing each other around the house on two of those scooters that you move by wiggling the handlebars.
After that we adults settled in for drinks and board games. Overall it doesn’t sound like much, I know, but it was the first time in a long while that my family all got together genuinely had a good time.
When I was younger my parent’s owned a second house a couple hours out of town. It was on a lake and backed by woodland. A nearly perfect setting for a winter holiday. It was just my parents, my sister and her boyfriend, and me and my girlfriend. It was planned to be a great 3 days of food and family. But…
Raccoons in the attic. A deer got in the garage because someone left the side door open. Five of us fell through the ice on the lake trying to take a group picture. The power went out and we only had generator fuel for 2 days. That last one is important because the well pump was electric and it unexpectedly snowed a lot. The only vehicle we had that could get up the snow covered hill was the old 4×4 pickup we kept at the house–which wouldn’t start. Our 3 day holiday turned into a week rationing food, water, fuel, using the outhouse, and playing boardgames and cards around the wood burning stove.
It was perfect.
Since as far back as I can remember my family would all gather at my grandparents house on Christmas Eve. My grandfather, perhaps the kindest, most generous, loving man on planet Earth would fry a very large batch of catfish every year. Hey, I’m from SE Texas, we eat catfish for Christmas. That’s not weird to me. We would have all the traditional catfish sides; hushpuppies, coleslaw, pickled watermelon rind, and hot peppers from his garden. After the meal was complete all the adults would drink coffee (as a kid I found this strange) and we would each have a piece of his “famous” pecan pie. Then it was off to gather around the tree. My grandparents would always let me play “Santa” and pass out the gifts to whoevers name was on the tag, and then one at a time we would open them, to the oohhs and aahhs. I am much older now, with kids of my own in their late teens and early twenties. We no longer meet every year. My grandfather is in his 90’s now and hasn’t been capable of completing that feast of a meal for quite some time, but I still think about it every Christmas Eve and it always brings a smile to my face. Everything seemed so much simpler back then. I miss those times. I miss being a kid without a care. I’m headed home on Christmas Eve this year and can’t wait to give my “Poorpop” (that’s what we call him) a huge hug. I love that man and all the memories he’s helped make for me.