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 of me, my sister and my grandmother decorating the Christmas tree. We were so young, so naturally we thought more (and shinier) was better. We would throw every garland, tinsel and ornament on that tree and stand back and admire our creation. My grandmother was too nice to say anything and would ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ right along with us. Looking back now, it was a hideous and gaudy tree but it still brings a warm smile to my face when I think of it.
The kids I used to babysit got me a purse full of random inside joke related items. It was so cute and thoughtful of them. Fifteen years later they still regift me the purse with different things in it every year!
Food. So much food!
My favorite holiday memory is cutting down our own Christmas trees with my dad when I was a kid. I grew up in Alaska, and we used to drive out to the airport in the middle of the night, pick out a tree, and cut it down. I would stand look out while he sawed it down because it wasn’t strictly legal, but it was a lot of fun!
My favorite winter holiday memory is waking up with my siblings before my parents woke up to get our stockings, turn the oven on and pulling the sticky buns out of the fridge to finish proofing. Once my parents got up, our presents were sorted under the tree and the whole house smelled like the buttery cinnamon rolls in the oven.
My favorite holiday memory is getting all dressed up on Christmas day to visit my ninongs and ninangs (godparents), my aunts and uncles, and grandmother and hang out with my cousins. It was sort of like trick or treating on halloween, only better.
I was a teen, sort of a late teen, when my grandma gave me the most hideous pair of BLUE slippers for Christmas. I mean they were BLUE. They were faux-fur too. :) Huge, thick bottoms and slide on style – and BLUE. (Did I mention that?) All I could think when I opened them was “What did I ever do to YOU?” (teens are ungrateful beasts, right?) Then I tried them on. It was like walking on the softest most comfortable clouds ever. I wore those things until they smashed down to nothing (and then got a hole). I wasn’t ever able to find another pair like them and I’ve looked for more than 20 years now. We still laugh about my face, I’m sure I was ridiculously shocked looking!
When I was a kid we would drive to my grandparents’ house. There were a zillion cousins, aunts and uncles. It was amazing, loud, fun. There was a children’s table in the kitchen and the “fancy” table for the adults. When we were little we loved being in the kitchen, but then you reached that age when you dreamed of the day you would “graduate” to the big table. There was fine china (which I now own) and at the end of dinner my grandfather would serve his plum pudding and our eyes would glow as he lit the pudding. A dessert on fire! How could that be? Now that my grandparents are gone all of that is gone, too. But I am thinking I might just have to learn how to make that pudding…
my favorite holiday memory/tradition is spending Christmas Eve out at my grandma & grandpa’s house with my cousins. We all partake in a delicious christmas dinner together, sing carols, play board games, and when the yard light dawns at dark we begin to open gifts. As I have matured over the years and gotten older, I almost find more joy in watching my loved ones open their gifts and the looks of joy on their faces, compared to opening my own! I love sharing the holidays surrounded by those who I love and cherish the most. On the way home from grandma’s house, it was always a thrill looking for Santa and the reindeer overhead. I was always convinced that some traveling airline up above with red lights was santa’s sleigh dancing around in the skies — to this day I still give my parents a hard time for ever letting me so convinced ;)
My favorite holiday memory was the awesome holiday parties my parents used to have for their employees and family at the bingo hall they ran when I was a kid. My mom rarely cooked at home, but with her background in catering, she could whip up some delicious treats at special occassions. My favorites were her mini cheesecakes and bacon wrapped around steak and water chestnuts.