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 holiday memory is of my grandmother cooking on Christmas Eve, making phyllo (filo) dough by hand, rolling out the dough, and then draping it everwhere. It was a time consuming process and she would always stay up way past when we had all gone to bed. The next morning, after a few hours of sleep, she would get up and start cooking two traditional dishes with the phyllo dough: a savory one with cabbage and pork, and a sweet one, with pumpkin, walnuts and spices. To this day, whenever I think of Christmas, I think of the smells coming out of my grandma’s kitchen and the time she took to prepare the special Christmas dinner.
I would love to make my own marshmallow! It’s sounds wonderful – Merry Christmas to you all!
My favorite memory is of the family sitting around eating Chinese hot pot. Just sitting together – talking, laughing and eating around a steaming pot of nice broth, cooking good food. What more do we need?!!
My favorite holiday memory was how my cousins and I would get together on the day before Christmas. My mom and aunts would be cooking a feast for that night. My cousins and I would play Nintendo Games. The meal always had a turkey, Taiwanese sticky rice, and Taiwanese sausage. After dinner the cousins and I would put on a Holiday concert for the parents. And after that, one of the uncles would dress up like Santa and hand out presents. The next morning there was always turkey soup, soy sauce stir fried turkey, and what ever dessert we didn’t finish for breakfast.
Holidays when I was younger would be spent back and forth between my family’s house and our cousins. My mom and my aunt would both spend time making a mix of festive dishes from their times in the Philippines and the new meals they had learned to make after they had immigrated to the United States. Despite having been separated from their families back home in the Philippines, they always made sure to keep our families close and for that reason I grew up just as much with my siblings as I did with my cousins. One time I had just arrived at my cousin’s house to sleepover and my eldest cousin and I sat down to talk in the kitchen. She happened to notice a warm pan de ube, which is a Filipino bread filled with jam made of purple sweet potatoes, sitting on the counter and she offered to share it with me. When my other cousin came down, he seemed confused and asked us if he had seen the pan de ube. My cousin explained that we had eaten it and in response my cousin snapped back, “Why would there be a warm pan de ube just sitting on the counter?” My eldest cousin just shrugged her shoulders and said, “I don’t know. Holiday magic?” To this day, we always laugh about season where warm pan de ubes magically appear on counters.
My best memory will be next year when I’m using all of this amazing stuff!!
The smell of Chex Mix in the oven – mmmmmn!
My favorite winter holiday memory actually happened 8 years ago today. My boyfriend and I were at my parent’s house for Christmas break. We went to St. Augustine to look at the Christmas lights, but while we were there, my boyfriend sat me down on the sea wall, turned on “This Gift”, and proposed to me! (BTW, the sea wall was as close as he could get to where my dad proposed to my mom.) And, of course, I said yes!
I loved making and decorating cookies using my grandpa’s sugar cookie recipe – secret ingredients: sour cream, nutmeg, and lemon rind. ;) When I found out I had celiac disease, I tried for several Christmases to make them gluten free, but without success. I cried real tears of frustration every time they didn’t turn out, and felt so silly for doing so. It was then that I realized what emotional connections we all have to food, especially around the holidays. I finally converted the recipe successfully, but it’s since been replaced by new gluten free holiday favorites. I still have fond memories of baking them every year for family Christmas celebrations though, and still love baking at this time of year.
My favorite memory of the Winter Holidays is catching my Dad playing Santa and fillings my brother’s and my stockings by the fireplace while we were suppose to be sleeping under the Christmas tree! Guess he didn’t wait until late enough! ????