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!
The one year we had enough snow to build Snow Walls and had a Snow Ball Fight
my favorite Christmas memory..hmm. So many to choose from! I think I’ll go with the time when our only son was born. It was his first Christmas, and man was he chubby! His eyes lit up, our hearts melted and after he saw the Christmas tree, he never left its side! He played with the bows on the gifts and ornaments on the tree. The sun was shining in through the window in the morning and it just seemed so unreal, and beautiful. My husband played with him, I played with him, our late Pup played with him. It’s a simple memory. But I’ll never forget that look on his face, and the glow of the sunlight surrounding him and our Christmas tree. To this day he loves the Christmas tree. And to top it all off, this year is his first Christmas where Santa has been brought to life!
Thanks so much for the opportunity to win such a great prize and Merry Christmas!!!
My favorite as of this date would have to be the last christmas I just had. It was my sons first christmas and it really just brought all the excitement of christmas back. To see all the joy in his face of opening presents and eating christmas dinner and the music. It really brought christmas back to life for me.
My favorite holiday memory is actually a bit of a holiday disaster. My parents used to host the entire family for Thanksgiving at our house every year and we would sit down for dinner at my great-grandmothers vintage dining room table. It is a beautiful oval shaped pedestal table that has been in our family for generations. One year we had so many people and so much food that we overloaded the table and it actually collapsed. I was about 10 years old at the time and was sitting at the head of the table so when it started to tip I was the one who was trying to hold it up as my entire family evacuated the food off of it. We live in sunny California so we ended up having Thanksgiving dinner outside in the backyard. This is my favorite memory because it shows how much my family loves each other and I think we ended up having a better time than we would have had at the fancy table. We also tell this story every year and laugh about it because my mom had the table repaired and it still sits in their house but never gets used for fear of it collapsing again.
One of my most treasured Christmas memories is actually from a time when I was away from my family. At some point, growing up my mom found these chewy peppermint candies with stripes around the edges and a Christmas tree in the middle. They weren’t organic or locally, artisanally made or anything like that but they were yummy and I looked forward to them every year as Christmas got close. So, off I went to college and I missed the chewy peppermints. And the Advent calendar. And exams were particularly stressful one year. I was in a different region of the country with very different weather and new friends and we’ll, you get the idea. I went to my mailbox one freezing cold day with exams looming and study time short and had a box from home. How sweet, I thought. It was bothering me that I hadn’t had time to do all my laundry and was wearing my last clean undies. Like, *really* had me concerned. This was, in decades of hindsight, unnecessarily compounding my anxiety. Hours passed, I finally got back to my room and opened the package to find a bag of the chewy peppermints (which I eagerly shared) and the best early Christmas care package ever — of all a week’s worth of brand new undies! TMI for a food blog giveaway, maybe. But it’s been decades and my parents are no longer alive and yet that’s the crazy act of mother love & caring that I cherish and remember every winter around this time. Every year after friends would ask if & when my mom was sending the chewy peppermints!
My favorite memory is making and decorating shortbread cookies with my family. My mom would always do the real work, mixing and rolling even though us kids thought we were helping. We then ate about as much dough as was made into cookies using a slew of different cookie cutters. We had moose, bells, trees, a pumpkin (?), and the list goes on. Then, once they had been baked and cooled, we spent forever decorating them (and eating icing). They were always extremely colorful and quite varied in terms of style, as the kids in my family have an age gap of 20+ years and one is an artist. So while there was a 2 year old decorating, there was also a 26 year old. It was so much fun to have everyone in the kitchen together, laughing and fighting over what music to play. Now we’re all over the place, but at least some of us still get together every year to make cookies.
My favorite holiday memory began when my twin daughters (now 15) were about two years old. We started an annual cookie decorating party that has become a yearly tradition at our house. We roll out ridiculous amounts of sugar cookie and gingerbread dough and then have a cookie decorating (and now, an ugly Christmas sweater party) celebration with their friends. It is something we look forward to every year and has become a family tradition that will continue when my daughters have children. Family traditions are the BEST…especially when they involve cooking and food…something that truly shows your love.
Going grandmothers house watching football with all the males while the females cooked but wanted to learn how to cook so I snuck away to help grandma
My favorite holiday memories are all of the family food traditions. We baked cookies, made Italian honey balls and zeppolas, and fried lots of seafood for the feast of the seven fish. It was a wonderful childhood that I hope to recreate for my son!
For the past 10 years, we have celebrated Christmas Eve with our best family friends. I always look forward to this night since the “pressure” and hoopla surrounding presents is erased. We’re all there to eat good food. drink wine, and simply be with each other. It’s a reminder of the true reason of the Christmas season as well as that the definition of family extends beyond blood relatives. It’s the people we choose to be in our lives as main support systems, and have proven themselves in times of need as well as in celebration.