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!
We used to celebrate christmas with the families of my parents’ best friends and in an effort to escape from the tone deaf karaoke, the “kids” would sneak out the movie theaters after dinner.
My favorite holiday memory involves trimming the tree. Every year on the weekend after Thanksgiving, my mother and sister and I would trim the tree. My mother has an incredible ornament collection, each with its own unique story and history. The tradition would start with my mother baking a frozen, store-bought coffee cake. Even though she was an incredible cook, and I have hundreds of memories of wonderful meals that she and I made together, I would still look forward to that cheap coffee cake every year. It was so comforting to wake up to cinnamon wafting from the oven, and it felt so deliciously naughty to eat big wedges of moist, warm cake for breakfast. She would even steam milk for us with a dollop of coffee so we could feel like adults. After coffee cake, we would start the ritual of the ornaments. Each person would take a turn carefully unwrapping the bright colored tissue paper from an ornament, and then tell the history and lore of that piece. It was better than Christmas morning, because we got to open dozens and dozens of little presents, and laugh over the memories it brought up. By the time I was an adult, the process took hours and hours. But it was always such a pleasure. Everyone was happy and full and surrounded by the ghosts of all the Christmases past.
Probably my favourite holiday memory is the year I found out that my parents were”Santa” – I was probably 5 or 6, I couldn’t sleep for the excitement, and so snuck down the stairs and saw my parents hard at work filling the stockings. It was one of the first moments where I began to realize that there was a whole bigger world around me, that I wasn’t the centre of it. And also that this was something that was important to my parents, to do this for me and my sister. To this day, we have stocking gifts, which are, ostensibly, from Santa.
My favorite holiday memory dates back to a particular time during Elementary School. It was an extremely treacherous winter with storms that knocked down trees, electricity lines, and light poles in our neighborhood. As the snow was so deep that we could not drive anywhere, I specifically remember embarking out into the snow, which was so high that it came up to my waist, with my Dad. We walked what seemed like miles at the time to go to the grocery store but, all the awhile, pretending that we were spies, scavenging Siberian terrain.
Our Christmas’ always revolve around food! After opening presents we start with Posole or Menudo, and sweets plenty of sweets! Then we start on making tamales, everyone crowds around the table spreading the masa, the youngest are in charge of adding and olive and my uncle will do the folding and cooking! Then while those are cooking we eat more sweets! Lol how we’re able to stay awake past 2pm I have no idea.
I love your blog. I can’t wait to make the braised pork. My favorite Christmas memory is getting my childhood cat on Christmas morning. My parents just let her loose in the house when I was about 7. I was the first one up, so I hopped into my dad’s recliner and turned on the tv. The new kitty jumped on the back of the recliner and scared me, for one part because I had never seen her before and for the other part that my family watched Gremlins the night before and I immediately thought she was a Gremlin!!!
Waking up on Christmas morning, my sisters and I would put together a breakfast tray and serenade my parents with Angels We Have Heard on High. And then proceed to rush them through eating so we could start opening presents.
A family trip to Europe in December 2005 is without a doubt my favorite winter holiday memory.
After landing at Paris Charles de Gaulle and riding the tangle of escalators in Terminal 1, we headed straight for the city center. Soon we found ourselves admiring none other than the Louvre Pyramid and the intricate Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel. Even though it was a gray, wet day, the excitement of seeing my high school French textbook in real life made me forget the cold rain. Once inside, a brief Da Vinci Code geek-out moment took place at the mini stone pyramid beneath the Inverted Pyramid.
In the galleries we explored the substantial Egyptian collection, among it the Great Sphinx of Tanis – a monumental work of granite housed in a dramatically-lit archway. Many famous Greek sculptures followed, including the iconic Nike of Samothrace. Standing on a grand staircase in the Denon wing, the winged goddess of Victory dominates her surrounding space and truly earns her status as a pièce de résistance. Just down an adjacent hall we came across a work of equal renown – the Venus de Milo. After many more masterpieces, we finally saw the Mona Lisa – with her mysterious smile (and a surprisingly small canvas). Later that evening, we basked in the full holiday decor of the Galeries Lafayette before taking a train from Gare de Lyon.
By the following afternoon we were on a snow-capped mountainside in Switzerland. A series of gondolas took us up to 9,900 ft and down to 8˚F. On the summit of Mt Titlis, I took some photos I’ll never forget. That night we stayed in Lucerne, a beautiful lakeside city in the German-speaking part of the country.
The next day we arrived in Milan, where we covered the Duomo and the neighboring Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. We then hit the road again to reach Venice on time. In the famed lagoon city we visited a glass-blowing factory, took several rides through the canals, saw the Rialto bridge, and stood among the crowds in St Mark’s Square. A memorable lunch consisted of squid ink spaghetti and a golden, crisp fritto misto.
From there we landed in Florence and immediately saw one of several David replicas. The Duomo and Campanile carved imposing shapes on the skyline, and up close they were even more incredible – both covered with ornate marble tiles in Italy’s red, white, and green. That same afternoon we made it to Pisa to see the Leaning Tower, and I captured one of my favorite sunsets to date.
On Christmas Eve in Rome, we began at the Colosseum and then hit the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, and finally Vatican City. Each spot was equally awe-inspiring, but the standout moment of the day was definitely seeing the Pietà – an incredible sculpture by a 23-year-old Michelangelo and the only work he ever signed.
Christmas Day was spent back in Paris – we visited the Arc de Triomphe and Napoleon’s tomb, took a boat ride on the Seine, saw the Paris Opera House, and climbed the Eiffel Tower. Dinner that night included the quintessential escargots à la Bourguignonne, steak frites, and plenty of good wine.
My family loves to travel, but we love great food even more. This trip really was the perfect combination of those things. Almost ten years later, I can still vividly recall many of the sights and sounds we experienced during our brief but action-packed vacation.
Thank you for sharing your favorite winter holiday memory, and I hope you enjoyed mine! Peace :)
my favorite memory was when my parents were too lazy to cook a traditional christmas meal so we had hot pot instead
Hi! My favorite holiday memory is definitely Christmas morning brunch! My mom and I get up early every Christmas morning and start cooking so the house warms up, and the good smells are in full swing by the time we get to opening presents! We’ve varied the menu but it’s usually pretty standard breakfast fare … there’s just something about Christmas that makes eggs, bacon and potatoes taste that much better! Then after presents and while we eat, we all share what we’re thankful for .. even though it’s not Thanksgiving anymore! ;)