To me, winter means all things comfort. Comfortable clothes like sweaters, cozy pajamas and cute hoodies, comfort rituals that I tend to forget during warmer months like reading by the fire or enjoying a cup of tea curled up on the couch, and lots of comfort food like soup, stew and chili.

Funny thing about my kids, though, they don’t seem to appreciate these special comforts of winter like I do. They only want to cuddle up on the couch to read with me if there’s nothing better going on, and the only hot beverage they want to warm up with is a hot cocoa with marshmallows.

I can totally appreciate that – I love hot cocoa too!

Baby, it’s cold outside!

They also don’t quite understand why we don’t grill outdoors during our cold, wet months either. They’ve grown up in Oregon where we’ve had rainy summer days that haven’t kept us from grilling, so it makes perfect sense to them that we should grill no matter the weather. My husband doesn’t agree with them on this one. Can’t blame him. I’m not standing out there waiting for food to cook either!

Coming from Southern California, it took us a couple years to get used to actually going outdoors when the rain falls, but we eventually did. My kids have grown up hiking, biking and playing sports out in the rain so living life a little wet is just what they’re used to.

And I have too, for the most part. Especially this year now that I’ve had a few cold, rainy runs. I’m getting wet a lot.

But the first thing I want after exposure to the wet, cold elements (well, maybe after a hot shower) is a hot bowl of soup. And my kids just don’t get it. Until recently.

I’ve made some decent soups in the past but anything mildly brothy was frowned upon. Chili was fine, and even thick stew but nothing with runny liquid would earn gold stars from my kids.

And then I entered a Pinterest giveway for $100 of Pacific Foods products and actually won. While I do thank my lucky stars often for the blessings in my life, I’ve not won much so I was pretty giddy the day I found out. Especially since we use many of their products already.

Just a sampling of our prize!

When two big boxes arrived, I had no room for everything so we ate from our pantry for a week, and made some donations since we were planning to anyways. Soon enough we had room for the soups, broths, starters and non-dairy milks that were shared with us. And what a bounty!

Thankfully it had been at least a year so since they had soup so I think they forgot about their dislike of all things runny or brothy. In fact, they were possibly more excited than me to look through all the cartons that lived on our kitchen counter for a week while we made room in the pantry.

They each chose one soup that they wanted to try first and we bought some good french bread at the market. Good soup always comes with great bread.

My son had minestrone and my daughter had a chunky tomato soup – and they loved every bite! The cartons indicated that there were two servings so I was hoping they liked their soup enough to take the balance to school the next day.

That was a problem – they wanted to finish the whole carton! Two servings! I was happy to oblige and find something else for lunch. The fact that they fell in love with soup enough to ask for seconds was more than I ever dreamed of! I was just hoping that they’d at least tolerate it.

Some of our favorite soups

Score one for this soup-loving mama! All thanks to Pacific Foods. Now we’re exploring many new soup recipes and I’m finding that my kids are loving all of them. I know this sounds very silly, but I love soup so this win truly warms my heart in so many ways.

Thanks again to Pacific Foods for helping my kids develop a taste for soup.

Want to know what their very very favorite Pacific Foods’ product is? The chocolate hazelnut milk, of course. Warmed up, it makes an amazing cup of hot cocoa!