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 memory is our annual gingerbread house building competition. You should know that I’m a teacher and created this activity, as well as all of the rules, and I am BIG on following the rules. We play in teams and scatter around the house, so while we can hear the other teams, we can’t peek at what they’re doing. My sister and I couldn’t keep the house up, so we broke a rule and put a pepsi can inside to support the walls. We thought we were so smart and we were definitely going to win. That is, until we all put our houses together for the judging and saw that my two brothers had built a house that looked EXACTLY like the pictures. I’ll never know how they did it! We were about to sabotage their house, when ours completely collapsed, exposing the pepsi can inside. It was a hilarious moment that none of us will ever forget.
My favorite holiday memory was when my Uncles hauled snow down from the top of Maunakea and dumped it on my Grandmothers front lawn. We woke up to a white Christmas that year. It was amazing for a bunch of Hawaiian kids that had never seen snow!
My favorite holiday memory happened the year The Grinch came out. My brother is 14 and 1/2 years younger than me and so I was 25 and my brother was 10. We did our usual Christmas eve ritual of driving around looking at lights and reading The night Before Christmas and went to bed. In the morning when my brother woke us all up everything was gone- all the Christmas presents that were already under the tree, all the stockings that were out, everything but the tree and the book The Grinch Who Stole Christmas propped up under the tree. My brother was aghast and I was stunned. We went looking around the house and in the garage we found my parents 4Runner covered in snow! (Well fake snow- we live in Southern California!) We cleared off the windows and we could see there was a stuffed Grinch sitting in the driver seat on a huge present and the rest of the car was full of our Christmas stuff and all of Santa’s presents!!! We worked as a team and shuttled all of the stuff into the house, put the stocking back by the fireplace and arranged all the presents under the tree and then made our usual orange rolls and had the best Christmas ever!!
Christmas morning, the whole family at the top of the stairs opening stockings. I feel warm and fuzzy just thinking about it.
My favorite memory is when I was around 12 and my extended family went on a christmas cruise. I have 12 cousins and we were all old enough to not need adult supervision on the boat. We spent the days running around the boat and the evenings in the pool and jacuzzi because that was when the seas were the roughest and there would be huge waves in the pool. The cruise also had an unlimited supply of soft serve ice cream, which we indulged in every night, and one night it was so windy when we were on the top deck that my ice cream flew into my cousins face!
I loved reading about your holiday memory! I certainly remember those calendars as a child and that my best friend always had one and I never did. My favorite holiday memory has to be when I was younger and celebrating Christmas morning. It doesn’t seem like anything too special, but I hold those days near and dear to my heart. I have two brothers, one 5 years and the other 9 years, older. While I was still young, the first one went off to college and after that it felt like the holidays changed. Every Christmas Eve, we would each open an ornament that we got to put on the tree. Then, the night of barely sleeping, much too excited for the next morning. On Christmas morning I loved waking them up to start opening our stockings while my mom prepared breakfast. My dad’s family is Norwegian, so we always had Kringla paired with the usual staples – scrambled eggs, sausage, & Belgian waffles. After breakfast we would then turn to open up the wrapped presents under the tree. The rest of Christmas Day would entail watching Christmas movies (usually my mom’s favorite – A Wonderful Life) and grazing on breakfast leftovers. We still hold the food traditions these days, but as we got older, it became less about the actions and more about just getting to spend the time we have with each other. Happy holidays!
Making too many Christmas cookies, every single year.
I think every holiday is special. I love backing for all my kids and grandkids but this year Christmas is going to be so special. My eldest grandson is coming home on furloe before he goes to afganistan. This will be our last chance to see him until he comes back home. So needless to say I plan on making all his favorites before he has to leavr.leave. its going to be very special to all of us.
Even now at age 21, my family still wakes up early Christmas morning to start the day with breakfast and opening gifts. It’s a really small tradition, but something we still do every year!
Cooking with friends snowed into a tiny apartment.