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 family is quite large (12 aunts & uncles, 38 grandchildren) so we would all go to my grandmas house in Portland, OR (no snow just lots of rain) we would all gather & just play games & tell stories of our childhood during christmas eve. On christmas day we would have almost like a potluck & opening presents was always hectic because everybody wanting to open presents at the same time.
My favorite holiday memory has to be cooking breakfast for my family last Christmas. I was the first one awake, and I was able to prepare a whole meal of hash browns, sausage, potatoes, salt fish, dumplings, and boiled green banana. It was a proper Jamaican/American feast.
Less a memory, more a tradition. Every Christmas, my extended family gets together at my grandparents house and every year after dinner we go for a walk around the neighborhood to walk off the meal and check out the Christmas lights. It’s nothing much, but it’s always something that I look forward to doing.
Without a doubt my favorite winter memory is making cookies and gingerbread houses with my mom and brothers. She had a mold to actually make the houses (which was such a fun part) and you could do a Victorian Mansion or a Log Cabin. I could never get my house to stay standing which meant I just overloaded all sides with too much candy. My brothers and I always ended up with more frosting and sugar on our faces than on actual cookies. Now, its one of my favorite traditions, especially as I became a baker and my mom opened up her own bakery cafe.
As a Korean American who married into a big, loud Irish family, the best holiday memories seem to revolve around….FOOD! I’ve brought Kim Chee and sashimi platters and an omnipresent rice cooker into the meat and potatoes world of my in laws. One year I had a special giant jar of home made Kim Chee from my best friend’s mother. I totally hoarded that jar. It had oysters and slices of Asian Pear in it….but I digress. I went looking for it a couple days later, ready to make the mother of all Kim Chee Jigae (stew) and it was….. GONE. My father in law had opened it, smelled it, was nearly knocked off his feet (you know what I’m talking about!) and threw away the entire jar. I almost cried. I think my heart still regrets the loss of that jar. 10 years later, it’s a regular menu item. Goes perfectly with a roast beef and potatoes.
My favorite holiday memory is connecting with all my children on Christmas Day and taking a family photo that utilized Skype. We had ipads and iphones going, Facetime and Skype and actually held the devices up so that my sons, who were in Korea and Oklahoma at the time, could still be part of your Christmas Family photo.
I remember the joy of going up to the tree on Christmas morning and seeing all of the presents waiting to be opened. First my family would open the stockings and eat a tasty Christmas breakfast. After which we would be able to open our Christmas gifts.
My favorite winter holiday memory is of a party called Turtleneck Christmas that used to happen in my hometown.This was a tacky sweater party before tacky sweater parties became as ubiquitous to winter as egg nog and candy canes. What started off as a small group of friends in a backyard about 12 years ago grew and grew until the last one that was held had over 300 attendees, a performance by a marching band, an open bar, and a petting zoo (for some weird reason). It was such a fun event and a great way of seeing all of my friends at one time since most of the rest of the time at home was spent with family. It was the absolute best party of the year, everyone I had ever known was always there, and it was such a strange/wonderful thing to look forward to all year. I really miss those parties, but I’m so glad I got to enjoy a few of them while it lasted.
A favorite memory is of the dogs ‘opening’ their gifts. They don’t know what’s going on, but they love it.
My parents own a restaurant so my mom works on Christmas. Generally, our family spends our Christmas with relatives, but sometime after I started middle school, my dad and I started to spend Christmas just us two until the restaurant would close. My dad can’t really cook anything, so that first one he cooked Korean Spicy Ramen with eggs and he was so proud of himself. We ate it by the fireplace and drank beer with his old record playing Pavaratti. Then we roasted chestnuts and we got lazy and just cut them in half and ate them with spoons. I always think of that one when I think of a happy Christmas.