While Chick-Fil-A claims they didn't invent the chicken - just the chicken sandwich, they did find themselves in the middle of a hot button issue this past week.  The company, which is known to be a restaurant founded on Christian beliefs and even closes on Sundays, is now in the middle of a firestorm surrounding gay marriage.  Dan Cathy, son of founder Truett Cathy and current COO of the company, spoke out against gay marriage and has acknowledged donating money to other groups that also believe marriage is between a man and a woman.

While Chick-Fil-A may not be considered gourmet cooking and Dan Cathy himself may not be working in gourmet cooking careers, this proclimation has people all riled up on both sides of the debate.  The Jim Henson Company, known for the muppets, has severed all professional contact with the food chain and one Chicago alderman wants to prevent the opening of a Chick-Fil-A in his city. On various social media sites, people are calling on gay rights supporters to boycott the fast food chain.

However, other people of the public say Dan Cathy's beliefs aren't consistent with every employee there and they do not represent the views of the entire company.  Many people are saying the beliefs of one man shouldn't affect whether or not people decide to dine at a restaurant and even Chick-Fil-A employees think this has gotten out of hand.  "The views of Dan Cathy do not represent anyone's views. During the interviewing process my religion never came into question. We also have a few homosexual employees," said one Chick-Fil-A worker.

Does this affect how you see Chick-Fil-A?  Will you continue to eat there?

We have all done it.  You buy an ingredient for making one meal and then forget it's there.  Months later you go back to the pantry or fridge and find it tucked behind things you actually use.  The date says it was "best if sold by" two months ago, but is it still safe to eat?  When you're working in gourmet cooking or catering you will be preparing a variety of dishes so the chances of this happening are probable.  Instead of just guessing or wasting your money by throwing out something that may still be good, follow these rules of thumb.

• Flour unopened: up to 12 months. Opened: 6-8 months.
• Sugar unopened: 2 years. Sugars do not spoil but eventually may change flavor.
• Brown sugar unopened: 4 months.
• Confectioners sugar unopened: 18 months.
• Solid shortening unopened: 8 months. Opened: 3 months.
• Cocoa unopened: indefinitely. opened: 1 year.
• Whole spices: 2-4 years. Whether or not opened.
• Ground spices: 2-3 years. Whether or not opened.
• Paprika, red pepper and chili powder: 2 years
• Baking soda unopened: 18 months. Opened: 6 months.
• Baking powder unopened: 6 months. Opened: 3 months.
• Cornstarch: 18 months. Whether or not opened.
• Dry pasta made without eggs unopened: 2 years. Opened: 1 year.
• Dry egg noodles unopened: 2 years.  Opened: 1-2 months.
• Salad dressing unopened: 10-12 months. Opened: 3 months if refrigerated.
• Honey: 1 year. Whether or not opened.
• Ground, canned coffee unopened: 2 years. Opened: 2 weeks, if refrigerated.
• Jams, jellies and preserves unopened: 1 year. Opened: 6 months if refrigerated.
• Peanut butter unopened: 6-9 months. Opened: 2-3 months.

Does this help?

It's now officially autumn and there are some foods that just feel like fall.  Pumpkin, cinnamon, and apple cider signify the drop in the weather and the crunch of the leaves.  Another fall food staple: sweet potatoes.  They remind us of Thanksgiving which happens in the fall so for the entire season, they find their ways onto our plates and into our recipes. 

One website gave the simple sweet potato a healthy and gourmet twist by loading them up.  Here's how:

Ingredients

• 2 medium or large sweet potatoes
• 1 1/2 tablespoons butter
• 1 shallot, minced
• 1 bag fresh baby spinach
• 1/4 cup light sour cream
• 2 ounces light cream cheese
• 1 cup chickpeas
• 1/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

1. Bake sweet potatoes at 350 for 45-60 minutes, or until fork tender.
2. Cut sweet potatoes in half and let cool for 5-10 minutes. While sweet potatoes are cooling, saute the shallots with the butter over medium heat until translucent. Add fresh spinach and heat for 2-3 minutes, until spinach has cooked down. Set aside.
3. Scrape the sweet potato out of the peel, leaving a thin layer inside with the peel so that it can stand up on its own. Mash the sweet potato with the cream cheese and sour cream. Stir in chickpeas, spinach, and salt and pepper.
4. Coat potato skins with a drizzle of oil and bake for about 5 minutes to get a crispier outside. Remove from oven and fill each skin with the sweet potato mixture and top with shredded mozzarella cheese. Bake again for 10-15 minutes, or until cheese is melted and filling is heated through.

Would you make these?

In the world of cooking and catering, who better to give you advice than real chefs?  A group of professional chefs have put together lessons they have learned in their lives in the kitchen. 

1. The most important tool in the kitchen is the mortar and pestle - Forget the immersion circulator, Thermomix and Pacojet, the prehistoric grinder is the one chefs keep coming back to. Neil Perry said hand-pounding pesto was the only way to go and Ben Shewry ground roasted seaweed between two beach stones.
2. Use more salt - Real chefs throw it in by the handful. Amateurs, they said, often underseason. David Lebovitz, a blogger, Parisian and former pastry chef at pioneering Californian restaurant Chez Panisse, uses and loves it in desserts (think salted caramel). He travels with his own to avoid having to use processed granulated salt.
3. Diets are bad for you - New York author and chef Gabrielle Hamilton railed against people who obsessed over everything they ate, saying it was a vicious cycle. Relaxing about what you eat, sometimes enjoying what you shouldn't, was better for you, she said. It was a view echoed by several chefs, including world-renowned Mexican-cuisine expert Diana Kennedy, who admitted she'd always had high cholesterol but still indulged in fatty meat. She's 88.
4. Blood, bones and butter are hot ingredients - Hamilton was right on trend in the title of her memoir, the wonderful Blood, Bones & Butter. Perhaps it's the chefs' way of proving the difference between us and them after all, Andrew McConnell said as he poured a plastic bladder of blood into a dish he described as a blood custard. Most people find the dish a bit confronting, so he thinks it's safer to call it boudin noir in the restaurant. Swedish chef Magnus Nilsson's hors d'oeuvre of roe in a dried pig's blood crust delivered crunch followed by a primally familiar, slightly metallic taste. Bone marrow was another lauded ingredient; so too was butter, which Hamilton loves to compound. Tip equal parts butter and your ingredient of choice into a food processor and blend, then use it on toast, on meats, in dishes and freeze for later, she suggested. Wrinkly oil-cured kalamata olives, anchovies, or garlic with parsley and shallots all made great compound butter, Hamilton said.
5. Pickle power is on the rise - From sauerkraut to kimchi, (''kissing cousins'', the American-Korean chef David Chang said), the pungent and pickled are popping up everywhere to punch up flavour and texture.
6. Pioneer skills are in, so it's time to drag out the Mrs Beeton - Living by the local, seasonal mantra, Nilsson said his seven-person team spent 50 per cent of their working hours sourcing produce, stored food in soil and straw to stretch it across the year and only ever bought meat in the form of a whole, live beast. Hamilton said chefs were using ''pioneer skills'' more and more, making jam, preserving, conserving, cellaring and storing and even cooking in earth.
7. There's a burning desire for fire - More cooks are using it and loving it. Frances Mallmann of Argentina grilled oranges stuck with rosemary and sprinkled with sugar. Nilsson stuck a whole bone on coals and sawed it open for the marrow, as he does in the dining room of his remote Swedish restaurant. Mallmann urged cooks not to toss and turn meat on a grill, but to to leave it be. His love of fire is part of a broader philosophy: ''All of us have to spend more time outside, children have to spend half the day outside, to learn the language of the wind, the clouds and smoke,'' he said. ''It will make them better adults.''
8. Octopus and crab are the go-to seafoods - Shewry said he and Chang agreed crab was ''one of the most amazingly beautiful products we have to work with in Australia''. Shewry kills them humanely by lowering their body temperature to about 2 degrees then spiking them behind the ''head'' with a knife. Los Angeles chef Jon Shook (from Animal restaurant) rhapsodised about our baby octopuses.
9. I do not want to be a chef - Shewry described the first years of his career, working 100 hours a week, his fingers bleeding under the nails from scrubbing dishes. Hamilton, of New York's Prune, said: ''The biggest mistake people make is saying 'I want to be a chef because I love to cook'. You should not go into a restaurant for that reason. You do it because you have a strange work ethic, you love to put systems in place, you like to create order from chaos.''
10. The future of food is rotten - Chang (from Momofuku New York and, as of this month, Momofuku Seiobo, Sydney) said managing microbes would be the next food frontier - mould, fermentation and bacteria had the potential to transform what we eat, in a good way, from aged steak to locally made soy. He's working with two Harvard microbiologists to understand microbes better.
11. Marinades are bad - The charismatic Mallman, the Argentinian king of the barbecue, pretty much opened his session by declaring, ''I hate marinades''. His objection was that they changed the taste of the primary ingredients. He prefers to add other flavours at the table, such as sauce, ''so the flavours have a little fight inside the mouth''. To explain further, he used pumpkin soup as an example. ''After three mouthfuls, soup is boring, but if you then have a crunchy galette: mmm.''
12. Bloody Mary for entree - At my next dinner party (or breakfast, or brunch), I'm serving guests Bloody Marys as an entree. Hamilton has nearly 12 on her brunch list at Prune. She serves them with skewers dangling off the side - perhaps pickles (turnips, brussels sprouts, beans), smoked peppers, olives, or anchovy. You may even get a beef jerky swizzle stick. The Danish version comes with aquavit, the Mariner with clam juice, and ingredients dance from wasabi to horseradish to beef stock. They're wonderful and, she said, best chased with a small beer. Skol!

Do you agree with any of this advice?

In restaurants all over the country, whether it be a five-star-restaurant or an Applebee's, customers generally expect the same thing.  They are looking forward to delicious food, friendly service, and not having to wash the dishes.  When a group sits down for a meal out, there are also questions or comments from the wait staff that they don't want to hear.  Here are a few examples:

1. It depends on what you like.  We want confidence from our wait staff that the food we're about to spend money on is going to be delicious.  In nicer restaurants, there are dozens of choices on the menu and patrons may need help deciphering between several options.  Waiters and waitresses need to be prepared to help finalize that decision sometimes.
2. We have two orders of the [blank] left; if you’re thinking of that I’ll put the order in now. When we go out to eat, we don't like to feel rushed and using this line does just that.  It makes the patrons feel like they HAVE to make a choice this second or they'll miss out completly.  It also can make the patron feel as though their meal is being chosen for them.
3. We'll bring out the dishes in the order they're ready.  Most patrons would rather have the food brought out in the order they're ready to eat them, not in the order they're prepared.  Also, if some people have food when others do not, it brings up the awkward situation of sitting there while your food gets cold while you wait for everyone else to be served.
4. We can’t turn the air conditioning/heat/music down because the chef likes it like that.You're not the only one in the restaurant so be prepared.  Although the wait staff could think of a nicer way to say the above sentence, the patron needs to realize others may like it cooler, louder, e.t.c. 
5. What are we talking about here?  The waiter's job is to serve the guests, not take part in their conversation.  While there are exceptions, like if you're a regular or you invite them in, mostly the guests want to have their conversations in private.

What other behaviors do you dislike on the behalf of the waiters and waitresses?

Although they're not gourmet restaurants, chain restaurants hold a special place in our hearts.Sometimes, however, you can't have it wherever and whenever you want; mostly because it may not be located where you are.  As anyone who has moved knows you cannot get an In-And-Out burger anywhere east of Texas, a Dunkin' Donuts Coffee on the West Coast, and it's exceedingly difficult to find a Chick-Fil-A anywhere but the South.  If you've never had scattered, smothered, and covered hash browns from Waffle House, you don't know what you're missing out on.  However if you have lived somewhere where they had a certain chain restaurant and they no longer have it to where you've moved to, it is possible to go through withdrawal. 

Someone should create a safe and sanitary way to ship certain chain restaurant foods to places where they don't have a chain.  Lets just hope no one gets a craving for Friendly's ice cream in Georgia in the summer.

What do you do when you get a craving for a food you can't get?

Hurricane Irene left 4 million people without power.  This means no air conditioning, no light, no microwaves, and no ovens.  For many people it also means a lot of takeout or cereal.  But there are ways to cook gourmet meals without power.  Some of these recipes do require a gas stove, which you can light manually in times of no power.  Others just involve a flashlight and some inspiration.  You need to get the food out of the fridge anyways if the power is out so why not make a cooking adventure out of it?

Chickpea Salad

Ingredients

• 1 15- to 15 1/2-ounce can chickpeas (garbanzo beans), rinsed, drained
• 2 tablespoons basil
• 2 tablespoons Italian parsley
• 2 tablespoons juice
• 4 teaspoons olive oil
• 1 small garlic clove, chopped
• 1/3 cup (packed) freshly grated Parmesan cheese
• Coarse kosher salt

Directions Combine rinsed and drained chickpeas, basil, parsley, lemon juice, olive oil, and garlic in medium bowl.Add grated Parmesan cheese and toss gently to blend all ingredients thoroughly.Season with salt and pepper to taste

Tuna Stuffed Tomatoes

Ingredients

• 2 (6 ounce) cans light water-packed albacore tuna, drained and flaked
• 1/3 cup chopped celery
• 1/4 cup chopped red onion
• Salt and pepper

Directions

• Combine tuna, celery, and red onion in a small bowl.
• Cut the top off of 2 tomatoes and hollow out using a spoon.
• Place the tuna into the tomato, top with salt and pepper

What recipies do you have to make gourmet meals without power?