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 happens every year. It’s the feeling I have after everything is done on Christmas Eve. It’s just me as everyone is asleep upstairs and it is so quiet and peaceful. The room is dark except for the tree lights. Christmas music is playing softly in the background. I love this just me moment before going up to sleep and then waking to all the hustle and bustle.
My favorite memory is getting out of bed late Christmas Eve and finding my mom and dad putting out presents from Santa. I was four. Never told my brother and three sisters what I discovered that night.
My favorite holiday memory was visiting Washington DC and Manhattan over Christmas Break with my husband and two girls. Living in S. California, we often have warm holidays so my girls got to experience a very cold Washington DC and got to explore Manhattan after a night of snowfall. We topped off the vacation on New Year’s Eve with watching the ball drop in a very cold Times Square, then hurrying back to our hotel to warm up and watch the rest of the festivities in our cozy, warm beds.
My favorite holiday memory is making homemade pizza on Christmas Eve with my dad. Mixing the dough, kneeding the dough, leaving it to rise as we went to look at Christmas lights. We came home to presents from Santa. After the excitment we would roll out the dough and make pizza. We were always starving by the time the pizza came out of the oven. It may not have been a “traditional” Christmas Eve dinner but it has become one now that the traditional continues on with my own children. A new mixer would make it all the better.
My favorite winter holiday memory was in 1996 when our whole family was snowed in for several days which required everyone to stay indoors and enjoy in the food, games and family togetherness.
Probably like most people, I love the holidays. What better way to spend time with family than to stuff your face with them! Our house was always THE party house. We already have a huge family, but anyone and everyone was always welcome. Knowing this, my mom and I would start cooking/prepping in the wee hours of the morning. At first, as a kid I just watched, but as I got older, I started to help out and even contribute some of my own dishes. Without fail, the menu would include prime rib, ham, turkey, three lasagnas, mashed potatoes, garlic bread, sweet potatoes, some sort of veggie, clam chowder, 3 different kinds of pies, cheesecake, …, and the list goes on. It always seemed like a ton of food (which for most people it probably was) but every year me, my brother, my sister, along with our 10 other cousins somehow managed to finish the leftovers after everyone else had gone home. Someone would bring a new board game every year and we would hang out and play games, watch movies, and keep pigging out until the wee hours of the next morning. Doesn’t get any better than that! Now my cousins and I are all grown up and we all have kids, and I hope that the next generation will carry on our tradition as well!
My favorite holiday memory is of Christmas at my grandma’s house – we had too many cousins so the kids all did a “Secret Santa” exchange and she always set up crazy games to play – one of them was to tie a a small donut onto a rope and you had to try to eat it with your hands behind your back and blindfolded…. I feel like I could lose a lot of weight now if i ate all of my meals that way.
One Christmas really stands out in my memory because, even as a kid, it made me realize how much my mom loved me and how hard she worked to make Christmas special.
I know for a fact that she was unable to get a Furby until right before Christmas the year that those were so ridiculously popular. Of course, it was all I wanted and I was so certain that she hadn’t managed to get it because they sold out as fast as the stores could stock them. Christmas day rolled around and I was feeling kinda blue and got to my last present..
Yeah, it was a furby. I screamed. I cried. I loved that thing.
I have always imagined my mom ending up in a deathmatch (which she obviously won) in the last hours of Christmas shopping with the last shipment of furbies. She was a tiger and I miss her. She passed away in 2006 from cancer.
Now I look forward to doing the same for my baby girl who was born in October. Luckily I have a few years to take kickboxing classes.
I will always remember my family friend going to our roof and ringing bells for santa’s sleigh. It would be snowing outside and us kids really believe that is was santa and his sleigh on the roof – even though all the adults opened presents on Christmas eve!
Hi Steph! Wanted to thank you for all the wonderfulness that is your blog I’ve got a pork shoulder in the Dutch oven cooking up some of your chashu right now, and it already smells heavenly!
My favorite memory from winter holidays past is probably going outside to help my dad shovel the snow. When I was small, he gave me the kid-sized snow shovel and made me feel like I was actually contributing. After my sister was born, I graduated to grown-up shovels and helped to build intricate snow forts and igloos to hide in. Coming back in after the vigorous workout meant instant flushed cheeks met with hot chocolate and tiny marshmallows, courtesy of mom. There’s nothing like being a kid playing in the wintertime snow.