My husband’s 14 year old cousin Jamie was in town this past week. It’s been years since I spent any time around a teenager, and good God. The entire week has been spent entertaining Jamie. Trips to King’s Island (an amusement park), to the outlet malls, to the zoo, go-carting, and to see GI Joe, and that's just the stuff I know about. I haven’t had a vacation like that in my life mostly because my mom and I were pretty poor when I was growing up. Not poverty level poor, but pretty poor. My mom was a secretary, and for most of the time I was growing up we lived on less than $25,000 a year. Looking back on it from the perspective of a grown up with bills to pay, I really don’t know how she did it. I make more than that, and I sometimes have trouble making ends meet. And that’s without a child to feed and clothe. In case I haven’t said it lately, good job Mom. So, being poor we didn’t get to take many vacations. We went to Florida when I was 7, but that was only because my grandmother paid for it. After that, I didn’t have a real vacation until I was 19, and could pay for it myself. Some friends and I went to England and Ireland for a week. And by pay for it myself, I mean put it all on my brand spanking new credit card. That was the week that I was introduced to a little something called credit card debt, but that’s a story for another time. That week was a blast though, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything, not even a perfect credit rating. Along with keeping Jamie entertained, this is the week that I discovered that my sister in law who is Ms. Super Cool when it comes to music tastes has an even worse guilty pleasure than I do. I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone hers, so I’ll tell you mine. Fall Out Boy. Although honestly, FOB is actually really good music, so I don’t know if that actually counts as a guilty pleasure. I would say Britney, but it’s almost cliché to have Britney be your guilty pleasure these days. Maybe My Chemical Romance. Inside the heart of this 30 year old woman lies a true blue emo kid. No one understands me.
Today is a big day for artichokesandgarlic.com, and I owe it all to Jamie. I’m having my first giveaway. I’ve been wanting to do this for awhile, but I was having problems finding something that I wanted to giveaway. This weekend I found my thing. We went to the new outlet mall north of Cincinnati, and there it was: Le Creuset. A Le Creuset outlet store. The sky opened, the angels sang, and candy rained from the sky. And then I went inside and realized that “outlet store” does not mean the same thing to Le Creuset as it does to the rest of the world. Things were still outrageously expensive, so far out of my price range it was laughable. Also, there aren’t enough gadgets. I really like gadgets. Beautiful cookware, but where are the gadgets? There were a few things that I managed to snag though. One is a French rolling pin(that’s for me, you can’t have it), which is something I’ve been wanting for ages. The other is what I’m going to pry from my unwilling fingers and give to one lucky reader.
I found these:
A mini and small size silicon spatula from Le Creuset , color: Flame. These are awesome for a few reasons. They’re heat resistant up to 800 degrees, so if you’re ever in a fire, you should be fine as long as you have these spatulas.* The heads come off of each of them, so you can remove them to wash them(dishwasher safe, by the way) and not have to worry about bacteria. Also, look how cute pretty!
So here’s how you win. Leave a comment telling me what your favorite cooking gadget is. That’s it. You don’t even have to tell me why it’s your favorite. You can if you want to, though.
The winner will be chosen randomly by me asking my boss(who doesn’t read this blog) to pick a number between blank and blank(the blanks being however many comments there are).
Rules:
1. Open to US citizens only
2. One winner will be chosen on 8/22/09 using the My Boss method above, and will be announced on 8/23/09.
3. Make sure that you leave me a way to contact you, either through email or your blog.
4. More than one comment is permitted and even encouraged, but only one comment will count toward the possibility of winning.
5. I will contact the winner either by email, or by posting on your blog.
Good Luck!
*Please don’t actually use these to ward off fire. I was joking.
50 comments: