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!
My favorite holiday memory was always decorating the tree. We did not have a lot of money growing up, so some years there was no tree. When we did have one, putting on the lights, making cranberry and popcorn strings, and putting on the other ornaments was the most fun. My mother was a terrible cook, but we would make cookies and decorate.
My favorite holiday memory is simply just being with my family at home. Each year we just keep it immediate family. We wake up and are super lazy, open gifts and make breakfast together. We always make a breakfast pizza. After that we normally make more food, it’s just a day of being together and eating haha. We usually start a puzzle too.
I’m from Hawaii and like many people with roots here our families are spread out on different islands and parts of the mainland. My favorite holiday memory is a tradition from when I was a child. Every year after Christmas my mom and I would hop on a plane and fly from Honolulu to Hilo, where my mom is originally from. My grandma and usually some of my cousins would meet us at the airpot and we’d drive from Hilo all the way to Ka’u. I say all the way but really it was only about a 45 minute drive, being from an island and anything over 20 minutes away seemed like another world, but that’s exactly what it felt like. The drive to Ka’u, being deep in the country, completely isolated really and having our whole family stay in the motel that my grandparents and great-grandparents have owned for years after moving to America from Japan that was the thing I looked forward to the most every year. On the actual day of New Year’s Eve my grandma, aunts and mom would spend all day cooking: rolling and cutting mountains of sushi, making the lucky red fish, preparing all of the little pickles and simmered dishes for New Year’s day breakfast, cutting sashimi…but somehow they still also managed to clean all the rooms and both of the houses on the property! We, the children, were always supposed to be helping but usually we would just dip into the firework stash and try to blow things up. The highlight of the night however came after dinner. Once we had eaten and grown tired of fireworks we would have a family game night. Usually charades, cranium or pictionary, the best part was seeing our stern Asian relatives letting loose just a little bit and having some fun. Then at right before midnight everyone would go outside together and wait until it was midnight which would be rung in by throwing firecrackers for good luck and to scare off the bad spirits. Finally the giant string of firecrackers (around 1,000,000 of them I think) that was either strung up onto a tree or laid on the ground and attached to a ladder would be lit. Then with the night finally coming to a close everyone would go to bed only to be up about 6 hours later for kinako mochi and ozoni. So I guess in summation my favorite holiday memory is the tradition of our splintered family all coming together and being forced to spend copious amounts of time together (no cell service :P) and all the effort the adults put into it to make it so festive and special. Now that my grandparents are older and in need of more medical care they live on Oahu so we still all get together to celebrate the holidays but it really isn’t the same as when we would all go back to the Big Island.
Hi Stephanie! Sorry for the super long comment, once I got started everything kinda just spilled out. I just wanted to thank you for this oppurtunity and wish you a happy holiday season as well. I’m following you on IG and just added you on pinterest, I love whenever you pop up on my feed, everything you post is either super freakin adorable or looks delicious. My IG is @erinzballbaranz, sorry if this sounds a bit familiar after consistently creeping on your instagram and blog it feels like I know you. Anyway thanks again and have a lovely holiday season! :)
My brother and I hatched a plan to catch Santa in the act, and even drew a detailed map with a minute-by-minute account of when, where and how we would actually achieve this lofty goal!
My favorite memory is seeing Dad down on the floor in his pjs, just like us kids, opening presents on Xmas morning, and our crazy pug racing in circles of excitement every time a kid would squeal as a present was opened.
One of my favorite memories is when we had a cart named Reverend Howard K. Furbody, we would make him his own Cornish Hen for Christmas. I was always jealous as a kid, that I did not get my own little chicken.
My favorite Christmas memory is of me and my siblings as kids passing around a ball as a “hot potato” and when the music stopped, the one who ended up with the ball got to open a gift!
My favorite memory happened every year. My parents would make my sister and I sit at the top of the stairs while they went downstairs. They would make hot cocoa and coffee and make sure everything was ready. We had to wait until they told us it was ok to come down. My sister and I loved the anticipation of those moments. We were so excited and could hardly stand still and as soon as they called up to us we would race down the stairs where they would be standing in front of the tree with hot cocoa for us and coffee for them and we would all get settled down and ready to hand out presents.
My favorite holiday memory is probably when I was younger and my grandparents and great grandfather would come over to our house on Christmas morning. We’d get to show off all of our presents and play with them when we weren’t eating the delicious Christmas dinner my mom made for us all. My aunt and uncle and other great grandparents would come over later. It was very cozy and happy.
One year my entire family was together at a reunion and we went caroling, horrible singing and all. It was embarrassing and cold but so much fun