The winner of the Gigabody giveaway is Jessica! She has been emailed; thanks to everyone for entering!
And with the conclusion of one giveaway, comes the start of another awesome one courtesy of our friends at Proctor & Gamble.
I am thrilled to be teaming up with Proctor & Gamble again, not only to give you the opportunity for a chance to win a P & G Prize Pack (which includes a $25 American Express Gift Card!) but because I love talking all things #NYTough, especially a certain toughness which is required around the holidays.
Hanukkah begins tonight at sundown, did you know that?!
I hate over punctuation but that exclamation point stems from my childhood.
I loved Hanukkah as a little girl more than my birthday (eight nights of presents!).
Just the scent of a burning candle at any point during the year brings me back to lighting the menorah as a kid, which by the way, I was NEVER allowed to light by myself because my parents feared I would burn myself.
Hanukkah doesn’t get as much coverage as Christmas but looking back, I can’t say that I ever really felt all that left out of the Fa La La season.
While New York is quite diverse, we Jews make up a large part of the population.
Growing up, most of the kids in my school were Jewish and the kids who celebrated Christmas were few and far between.
So while I don’t really know from Santa on a personal level (I always wanted to experience Christmas morning!), we always did universal holiday-type activities anyway.
I loved taking car rides to look at holiday lights (and counting the lit up menorahs in the windows), baking holiday cookies and most importantly, getting together to celebrate tradition through Hanukkah parties and really good food.
So much of my childhood was spent in Manhattan, especially during holiday times, at my aunt’s house (you may recognize her pretty table).
Tradition had it that I spent time in the city with my cousins for extended sleep overs during the winter breaks. During this time, we pranced around the Big Apple with all of the hustle and bustle of the holiday shoppers, went ice-skating outdoors, saw the Big Apple Circus each year that it came to town, attended Broadway shows and would walk through Rockefeller Centre to see the tree.
If you are at all familiar with Hanukkah, you are also familiar with the potato latke, also known as a potato pancake.
The whole point of Hanukkah (in basic terms here) is to celebrate the miracle of the menorah oil which long ago, burned for eight nights when it was only supposed to last for one.
For this reason, we celebrate through lighting eight nights of candles and eating foods fried in oil.
Tonight I will be hosting Hanukkah dinner at my house which means lots of potato latkes and lots of mess to clean up in my kitchen.
Life was easier when I wasn’t the holiday-making adult.
I honestly couldn’t do it without my Bounty paper towels.
If you have ever made potato latkes, you may know about both the lingering smell of oil and the messy process of making the latkes and then trying to soak up the extra oil prior to serving.
One Bounty paper towel to line your plate and then another on top of the latkes to blot the oil.
I use Bounty paper towels for every type of clean up needed in my house.
In fact, I keep a slightly damp paper towel on hand at all times should my son come near the kitchen, as was the case on Sunday when we baked our Hanukkah sugar cookies.
Trust me, if I could follow the kid around with a wet Bounty paper towel or attach one to his neck sort of like the bib they give you in the dentist’s chair, I would.
Between the holiday baking and cooking, I am down to my last roll of paper towels.
And I don’t know if it’s a New York thing, a Jewish thing, a New York Jewish thing or a universal parent thing but my dad likes to pick up the giant packages of Bounty paper towels for me so that I am never without a roll.
Just like he is afraid I will burn myself with the menorah, I guess he still lives in fear that I may make a mess.
Giveaway time!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
//widget-prime.rafflecopter.com/launch.jsIf you are looking to make latkes tonight and need a recipe, my sweet potato latkes recipe is pretty awesome.
If I recall it correctly, I used quinoa flakes in place of flour and baked them with coconut oil instead of pan-frying.
I am making them again later and will show you how they come out in tomorrow’s post!
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This post is sponsored by Proctor & Gamble. While I was compensated for my time, all memories, thoughts and opinions expressed in this post are my own.
If you celebrate Hanukkah, are you making latkes later? What kind?
Are you a big paper towel user?
Do you drink hot chocolate while driving around to look at holiday lights like I do? //widget-prime.rafflecopter.com/launch.js
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