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!
hm… favorite winter holiday memory, huh. definitely had to be a few years ago, senior year of high school, when i decided for the first time that i’d throw on the apron and try my hand at cooking up a feast for the family. we’re a small family of four and i figured it’d be an easy task. like, how hard is is to truss a chicken right? i take ap physics and i’m smart enough to use the right hand rule, or something like that. high school thoughts, y’know? we lived in a small house when i attended high school, a 2×4 kitchen with a dinky oven and a counter top taken up entirely by our rice cooker. the wooden kitchen table that my mom liked to throw pretty covers on was powdered with flour. the pile of dishes never fell below the rim level. the chicken was so full of ‘tude and wouldn’t participate for the life of me. no amount of food network could have prepared me for that hell.
but i persevered. the chicken was pretty whack and i learned that mashed potatoes are truly an art. but from that experience i think what i got was pure determination to nail the future holiday dinners on the head (which, with much thanks to you and the other blogs i adore, have proven to be a lot more successful), and the super rewarding smiles of my parents as they congratulated me on working so hard to put together what was, at the moment, one of the simplest ways i could relay my love and appreciation for them as my parents. and i think my sister came to see cooking with an interested eye after that too.
but i’ll be honest. after a hectic thanksgiving of 7 hours + a surprise potluck with friends this year, i think i’m sitting out on christmas this year and settling for some fine slices of sushi and korean fried chicken haha.
thanks for running such an awesome, inspiring blog. your posts are always so pleasant to read and learn from. i hope the last few remaining days of the year are full of warmth, and that 2016 brings much happiness to you!
It is so hard to choose just one memory! I think that my favorite part of the holidays in general is the atmosphere. All of the family that you haven’t seen in a long time is gathered together over presents and food, and everyone is happy. It’s such a nostalgic feeling.
When I was growing up we would always go snow skiing the day after Christmas. Even though I remember always being cold (and complaining about it constantly), I have very fond memories of skiing in some incredible snow!
My favorite holiday memories are decorating gingerbread houses with my nieces and driving around my pajamas looking at Christmas decorations with my parents and siblings!
Wonderful wintery memories abound for our broad. Having lived in Colorado, and Oregon. But favorite is now being able to go the beach all winter, yippii!
My wife telling our daughter that our pets could talk at Midnight on Christmas; the prospect was so exciting but she never could stay awake long enough to hear what they had say.
The night before Christmas I always whip up a huge breakfast with cinnamon rolls, fruit salad, and bacon. I love the fact we get to sit down by the fire as a family and eat a huge breakfast!
My favourite holiday memory is the first christmas that my family and I cut down our own tree! We drove out into the country and (with a permit) hiked out into the bush to track down the perfect tree! It was an amazing bonding experience, even if getting it secured to the roof was a bit difficult.
A recent favorite memory was seeing my parents after being out of the country for a few years. We celebrated Christmas with my wife’s family who could not have been more warm and inviting. It’s all about family and enjoying those heartfelt moments!
A little cliched, perhaps, but nonetheless memorable. Naturally, a Christmas gift story. I was probably about 5 or so. I wasn’t a terribly active kid, so I typically wanted your standard issue plastic figures/toys/playsets/etc. I would’ve been ecstatic to receive gifts that fell entirely in that category. Particularly, I remember asking for some huge, expensive, playset of one of my favorite superheroes of the time, Captain Power – now, as an adult, something I recognize and acknowledge as an expensive hunk of useless plastic, but as a child, of course, the object of my imagination. On Christmas morning, I found a large box under the tree, which I was sure was this very playset I’d asked for. However, when I unwrapped it, it was instead my first bicycle. Not going to lie – at the time, I was a bit let down. But that all went away when I first was able to ride that bike on my own (after plenty of trial and error, of course). That first ride on a bike, with no training wheels and no help from your parents, is an unreplaceable childhood memory.