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!
I think my favorite general Christmas memory was from the Christmas Eves when we were kids. Every year we would go to church on Christmas Eve and open presents after. Somehow Santa always came while we were at church! It was always strange too how my dad would make us get in the car and we would wait FOREVER for my mom to join us. That part became clear as I got older and realized that “Santa” was really my mom scurrying to set presents put before church ?
I don’t know how to pick just one. My favorite tradition now is our Christmas Eve routine – it’s just my mom, sister, brother-in-law and I, so we go to an early candlelight Christmas Eve church service and then go out to dinner at a wonderful restaurant somewhere near the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, which is lit up with beautiful Christmas lights on every building. It is fun to just relax and enjoy each other’s company while having a delicious meal in the prettiest neighborhood in town during Christmas!
My favorite holiday memory is just a random, silly one. My grandparents used to always fly out and stay with my parents for a couple of months around the holidays, so I spent many years also flying back home for Christmas to see everyone. One night my mom, grandma, and I were just hanging out in the kitchen and for some reason that I cannot remember, decided to see if we could actually hang spoons from our noses (maybe my dad was watching tv and someone did this on tv?) And then it became a contest to see who could do it the longest. Well, my grandma was such a pro, and stood so still, my mom started putting a santa hat on her, then hanging a stocking from her collar, the wrapping a garland around her. My now-husband must have caught all this on camera because now I have a a framed collection of photos of all of us hanging spoons from our noses… plus a series of shots of my grandma in the exact same pose but with increasing Christmas decorations on her. It hangs in our hallway and it makes me laugh every time I pass it. Both my grandparents have since passed away, but I love that we had these silly moments with each other to remember!
My favorite holiday memory is when I gathering with all my best friends and we exchange gifts. It is the most exciting moment, because you don’t know who is going to receive your gift and you don’t know what gift will you receive either. For me the most precious part is not about what I got but the laughter and the moments is priceless.
At the time when Razor scooters were THE toy to have, my four neighborhood friends and I all got one as Christmas gifts, totally unplanned, each in a different color. The next day we formed The Scooter Girls club and spent the next year riding around the neighborhood together, matching notebooks in hand, solving mysteries.
My favorite holiday memory is the Christmas Eve feast, where our large family comes together for a night of seafood– stuffed lobster, red wine-braised octopus, baked calamari, and you can’t forget the oysters on the half shell! It’s all about good company and better food!
I have created a tradition of making home made cinnamon rolls for christmas morning. they come out of the oven hot, I drizzle them with icing and with the early morning winter sun light pouring through our south windows you can see the steam rising into the air. The boys love to look at them almost as much as they love to eat them.
My favorite Christmas memory was going to my Italian Grandmother’s house every Christmas Eve. She would always have the most amazing food but especially the desserts. Her desserts all had weird names like nook or gabadio but they all tasted so great. Luckily someone in the family has carried on the tradition so my kids get to experience the same thing (without Grandma though).
My favorite holiday memory is going out with my mother into the snowy yard to collect snow for our snow milkshakes. We would come back and blend the snow with evaporated mill and peppermint candies…yum.
My grandmother lived with my family, and I used to love making latkes with her – she made mashed potato ones for the rest of the family and the shredded “hash brown” style just for me. She still makes them, but I haven’t lived at home in over two years!