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 is seeing snow for the first time on Christmas day. The first part of my life, I grew up in countries where there wasn’t any winter. By 7 years old, my family moved back to France, and I was waiting impatiently to see the first flake fall from the sky… I knew (saw it on TV) that many places in France had already had snow by December, but not our town. Snow waited for Christmas day to arrive to our place! Cliché huh? I was enchanted, I ran out and played catching the snow flakes with my open mouth!
getting our big extended family together to do secret santa every year! my uncle video tapes the whole guessing game every year even though we’ve never rewatched a single year’s video.
When I was 8 I had to share a room with my sisters I didn’t mind it so much because I got a bed to myself. (They’re twins and at age 4 they had this thing where they were inseparable so they shared a bed) This particular memory of christmas that I have is this. It looked like we weren’t going to have a christmas. My mom was pretty tough once she settled on a punishment that was it. We went to sleep on Christmas Eve believing there would be no Christmas. No Dinner, No Toys – No Tree. Me and my siblings woke on Christmas morning to our play area filled with gifts and she managed to assemble a tree and decorate that area for us. I don’t have many good “Mom” memories in fact this is the last good memory I have of her from my childhood. She managed to preserve the magic of Christmas while destroying everything else. I’m just happy she saved one thing for us.
After visiting all of my extended family in Wisconsin, my parents wanted to get home so we could celebrate Christmas together at our house in Minnesota. But after being caught in a snowstorm and the drive taking longer than usual, they were exhausted and decided to try to find a quick place for us to grab dinner, forgetting that nothing would be open on Christmas. We drove around St. Paul for a while, when we came across the only brightly lit, lively building on the street. Upon walking in, we were met with big beards, curly sidelocks, yamakas and enormous smiles. We had walked into a restaurant in the midst of a large Jewish party and instead of asking us to leave, my parents explained their story and our family was welcomed in by this wonderful group of people and an amazing kosher feast. It was a completely unexpected and unforgettable holiday experience.
My favorite holiday memory has to be the time when my entire family and I, including my external family such as my cousins, aunts, uncles, etc., headed out to the snow. It was on Christmas day and we all woke up early to open presents. Soon after, we packed everything and drove out about 2 hours from our hometown to the snow. The weather was perfect and I was ecstatic upon seeing the glimmering white snow. We rode sleds down the hills, built snowmen, and had snowball fights. Afterwards, we gathered at my cousin’s place and ate a delicious dinner. It was great spending time with the entire family.
My favorite childhood memory is eating traditional polish food that my parents would make from scratch. Homemade smoked and fresh kielbasa, cheese and sauerkraut pierogies and borscht soup. This is the first year we have taken over the making of the hickory smoked kielbasa for the family. Quite the 2 day adventure to make 30 pounds of kielbasa. YUM!
I don’t have any happy holiday memories from my childhood. But now that I’m grown, I can share the holidays with my husband and they are always happy.
My favorite holiday memory is making tamales with my aunt. I was finally old enough to graduate from cleaning the leaves to spreading the masa. I was awful at it! I spread the masa thick and uneven and I was slow. My aunt was patient and showed me tips and tricks. By the end of the evening I was a mediocre masa spreader! Whenever one of the tamales I spread was opened, we would joke on the amount of masa to meat ratio.
my favorite holiday memory is probably making sufganiyot (jelly doughnuts) with my family! it’s like one big production line. one person’s frying, one person’s filling, another one’s sugaring, and yet another’s tasting! at the end, we all gather around the menorah with our freshly made doughnuts. it’s wonderful!
During my freshman year of undergrad, I lived in a suite with 3 other girls. “Suite” is a term that can only be used loosely because it was essentially two tiny rooms connected by an even tinier kitchen. By the time winter break rolled around, we were all ready to set each other on fire but we still decided to make & decorate cookies. We had a great time, gave the extras to our neighbors & ended up being closer for the rest of the year.