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 favourite holiday memory is my first Christmas in Canada. We had a super tiny tree, and my mom and I made ornaments out of juice can lids. We didn’t have a lot back then, but it didn’t matter :)
My favorite holiday memory is one of my family’s traditions, so I have many memories of it spanning my lifetime. My brother and I were very close as children (and still are as adults). Of course on Christmas morning, we would wake up way before my parents would want to be, because we were so excited about the magic of the day and the presents awaiting us. Instead of waking our sleeping parents, we decided that whoever woke up first would come to the other’s room with a pack of cards. We began with younger games like Go Fish or War, but over time the tradition aged with us to games like Speed and Poker. It’s a tradition I’ve always cherished with my brother.
It was our first Christmas Eve together as a married couple, and our first Christmas Eve in California. I’m from Virginia, and had been complaining to my wife that in this new climate, there was no way we were going to get a white Christmas. No weather miracles occurred overnight, but the next morning my wife surprised me with french toast covered with a thick coating of powdered sugar and what were undeniably snow angels.
My childhood New Year’s Eve party
I don’t even know if this is real memory since it was so long ago. When my sister and I were younger we would go to our aunt’s for the holidays. Both my mother and my aunts are widows so we would spend the holidays together: my mother, my sister, my aunt, her son Johnny, and me. It was snowing and the power went out and I remember everyone gathered in the living room bundled up together. It was a mess of blankets and candles and bad jokes and scary stories. I remember pretending to look at stars in the ceiling and trying our best to make shadow puppets. Now that I’m older, I realize Christmas is really for children. I look forward to spending this upcoming Christmas with nieces and nephews.
One year during the holidays we had a huge blizzard so my whole family was snowed in. The power was out so we all bundled up by the fireplace, made some s’mores, and the adults shared stories about when they were kids and what our great grandparents were like. It was really special.
My mom’s best friend has lived in Alaska since 1976. Growing up, we sent her family a holiday package and they sent one to us in MN. My mom would often be stuck in line at the post office to make sure it arrived by the holidays and the news would always zoom into my mom as she’d decorate the box and it’s address was going to North Pole, AK. Each gift for every family member was also wrapped but we STILL had to wait until the day she gave us to open even the outside box. The anticipation was the best part and as my mom’s best friend is an artist, many of the gifts were hand made- many of which I still have to this day! It was never about expecting extravagant gifts, it was the fun of waiting to see what sort of creative thing she had made for us or the sort of unusual native item she might have sent to us in the lower 48. The tradition of the box arriving early and waiting to tear into it annually is a memory I will never forget!
When my amazing golden retriever, Milo, was still alive he once snagged some treats he wasn’t supposed to ;). Many Christmas Eves ago, my mom put out some cookies and cider doughnuts for Santa. This is when I still believed and my great aunt always would bring bags of these doughnuts from this one bakery in her Western Mass hometown. As I pranced around and helped my mom put out the cookies and doughnuts for Santa, Milo looked on. My mom set them down on an ottoman that was lower to the ground and Milo couldn’t resist. I came running downstairs from brushing my teeth and saw that all the cider doughnuts had magically disappeared. When I alerted my mother, we both ran to the back room where Milo was sitting by the door and looking quite guilty with all the sugary and cinnamon-y sparkles on his whiskers. My mom put him outside immediately and from then on we stuck to just cookies for Santa.
When our kids were still young, my grandmother would fly down to visit us for Christmas. She would bring homemade cookies and treats packed in her “Grasshoppers” brand shoe boxes. As a result, the kids referred to her wonderful Christmas cookies as grasshoppers. Now the kids are grown and we have grandchildren, but they still remember and miss grandma’s grasshoppers.
My favorite Christmas memory was when my Grandma was making popcorn on the stove. She walked away and forgot about it. When she returned the top had come off of the pot and popcorn was flying everywhere. She laughed so hard she peed her pants!