We love garlic and use it in just about every savory dish we make. We also cook in mass quantities and I always dread peeling the garlic. I hate it when my fingers get sticky from the garlic juice and the skins stick to my finger. It's not a difficult task. It's just mundane.

We recently discovered Trader Joe's The Emperor's New Cloves — one clove per head garlic. It's super easy to peel and doesn't have a sticky skin. I'm guesstimating one clove of this garlic is about five to six normal cloves of garlic. It's sold in a little wicker basket and contains six heads of garlic for $1.69.

As far as taste, it's a little milder than white-bulb American garlic. And it's perfect for roasting. It's so much easier and better than roasting normal heads of garlic. You don't have to deal with all the skin, squeezing and mess. The roasted one clove per head garlic is just one big lump of sweet, mellow garlic!

I love Chinese sticky rice. It contains several of my favorite ingredients — sticky rice, Chinese sausage and mushrooms. I know I'm going to have Hungry Bear's sticky rice at least twice a year, at Thanksgiving dinner and during Lunar New Year (Vietnamese/Chinese New Year) festivities. It's become a traditional dish for us on these holidays.

I really enjoy the rich flavors from the Chinese sausage, shiitake mushrooms, oyster sauce and soy sauce that get infused into the sweet, sticky rice. Chinese-American families often serve sticky rice in place of stuffing during Thanksgiving. It's great with turkey, roasted duck or just by itself. I didn't grow up eating this dish, but I now consider it a comfort food.

Hungry Bear started making Chinese sticky rice using a recipe from Grace Young's The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen. The recipe has dried scallops and shrimp in it, which takes additional time to prepare. Over the years, Hungry Bear has altered Grace Young's recipe, excluding the dried seafood, in order to save prep time. The scallops and shrimp are a little too fishy for my tastes and I prefer my sticky rice without them.