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!
When we were little, my mom would make Scandinavian rosettes for us and I loved eating those crisp, snowflake-shaped cookies!
My favorite holiday memory has always been popping fireworks/firecrackers. We could never afford that much but me, my brother, and my sister would always make the most of with what we got. We would do dumb things like see who could hold onto them the longest or throw them as high as we could before they went off. It was fun. Our dad would also always make fresh sashimi from whatever he caught that morning. He would cook on the grill while we played. At the end of the night we would always smell like smoke. The smell of wet red paper and gunpowder the next morning always brings me back. I know it doesn’t seem like much but that’s the holidays for me.
I’m not going to pretend that I know the details of why there was a pair of crotchless panties on the top of my grandparent’s Christmas Tree one year (I was told that there was a lost bet). I didn’t ask any questions about it even though I had SO MANY QUESTIONS! I figured that my grandparents did this every year and I just now noticed it. I was in the third grade.
SO… when I went back to school, our teacher asked us to write about the Christmas traditions in our family.
I couldn’t think of a one!! So I wrote about the underwear on the tree as though this was a normal tradition that happened in our family and other families.
My teacher called my mom.
My mom called my Grandma.
I was afraid that I’d get in trouble but mostly my mom just never wanted to ever discuss this ever again. :)
My favorite holiday memory is when I was in middle and my family was still living in our old house in WA. It hadn’t snowed in a while and my sister and I were wanting it to snow for the holidays. Well, we got the great idea to watch the “epic” Nickelodeon movie “Snow Day”, in honor of our desire to have one. Well it was great, but it still didn’t snow by the time the movie was done (of course). So me and my sister went to bed. The next morning, however, it had snowed. It was awesome! We still had to go to school which sucked, but they called a snow day the next day and we played all day. We then watched that movie every night, and every year since then because the movie is totally magical… (not really but we like to think so). Happy Holiday!
Gah–what a generous giveaway! I’d love to win. My favorite holiday memory is one of two: My family’s tradition of coming home from Christmas Eve Mass, jumping straight into our pajamas, and watching Night at the Museum 2 (a family favorite, not at all related to the holiday) as a whole family on the couch. It’s a kid’s movie, and my youngest sister is already 16, so we’re not exactly the intended demographic, but we love it. Or, the tradition my middle sister and I started when we were still young enough to get excited about what was under the tree, but old enough not to bother our parents to wake up: one of us would sneak into the other’s room, and we’d play Spit and War and other card games until the grown-ups conceded that they had gotten enough sleep. We were looking forward to presents, but still patient, and it was always a (rare) moment of sisterly peace. Now we just sleep in like the rest of the grown-ups :)
My favorite holiday memory is making cookies with my mom when I was a young girl. She did most of the making. I did most of the licking the spoons. I would stand on a chair pulled up to the counter and watch her measure, then I got to dump in the bowl. My favorite part though, and it was always MY job, was making the crosshatch pattern in peanut butter cookies with a fork.
When I was about 9 (i think) years old, my parents staged our living room to really convince me and my sister that Santa was real. They left the fireplace cover ajar, put some sooty footprints on the hearth, left us a hand written thank you note for the cookies and milk. Pretty sure we both got bikes this year. It was a magical morning!
I have a bad habit of trying new dishes out on my family every holiday. I’ve had a few missteps, but it always makes for a good memory!
One of my favorite and most vivid holiday memories is making gingerbread houses together as a family. Whether it’s graham crackers and an empty milk carton, gingerbread kits from the stores, or homemade gingerbread cookies, it’s always fun to try to stick the pieces together. Once secure, I like decorating with different colored candies and icing, and sometimes miniature people. We never eat them because they’re rock hard by the time Christmas is over, but it’s always fun to display the frosting icicles, coconut snow, and life saver wreaths.
One of my favorite holiday memories is going out on Christmas eve for a wonderful dinner with about 10 other families. Let’s talk about a big group with adults and children. Dinner was filled with laughter, singing, presents and of course, delicious food.