The Making of a Photographer - How I Ended Up Behind the Lens

It started with a mistake.  All good stories do, but this one in particular was a blessing.  When I was in high school my parents took a trip to Hong Kong where electronics were notoriously inexpensive, and so I asked my dad to buy me a video camera so I could shoot and edit films.  I suppose he wasn't aware of the "video" part of camera and so he bought me a *beautiful* SLR camera by Minolta.  I was a little disappointed, but it was no wonder he bought it for me because I enjoyed every camera I was ever bought.  From little plastic camera I bought for $10, to the Polaroid-like camera my cousin Kamal bought me (Kodak Trimprint Instant Camera) I loved taking photos.  The purchase of the Minolta also meant I could join the Yearbook Club and take real photos.

My High School Yearbook Photo - No Head Photographer Credit

My first assignment with the yearbook was to shoot the golf team, which was the head photographers first assignment.  I really impressed him, and in the end, I was head photographer in grade 12 at a time when head photographer was a position reserved for grade 13s.  I went to yearbook camp at Trent university and had an amazing time.  Despite taking about 60% of the photos for the yearbook, the editor and I suppose the rest of the grade 13s in the club made my name the first in the list, but I did not have the Head Photographer designation.  I also headed up the end of year slideshow but then gave the position to another member when I decided to focus on my studies, and overwhelmed with all the yearbook work, and despite contributing photos and attending all meetings, my name did not appear in the credits.  I didn't let it bother me, but looking back, I know it hurt.  Even writing this now, I still wish I understood what I had done to be so under appreciated to not get the credit I felt I earned and deserved.  The nail in the coffin was being told that the position of Head Photographer was being given away.  The reason was that I wasn't as organized as the person that was replacing me.  I tendered my resignation, much to the dismay of my replacement, but it was an inadequate reason to me.  My best friend was the Editor of the yearbook, so it was a shame.  I still contributed but didn't get credit but mostly because it was felt I didn't want to have any part of the yearbook, which is understandable.

In the weeks after I resigned, I took an adult course in Commercial Photography at the Ontario College of Arts.  I received the highest mark with an A+, and I was the youngest person in the class.  In fact they had to make a special consideration because I was technically too young by the registration deadline, but my dad argued that I would be 18 by the time the course started.  Looking back, I am still amazed by the incredible pictures I took back then.  It's hard to believe I never chose it as a career.

Vesuvio Bakery - 2007

When I went to York University, I was part of Calumet College.  So I took a Calumet course in photography and really honed my darkroom skills.  I was very experimental and throughout my years in high school and university, I bought weird films.  I was a sponge at courses I'd sign up for, remembering and trying everything I learned.  I spent lots of money on film, film paper, and development.  I also bought some film in bulk and made my own canisters of film with a special machine.  Despite visiting many times, my professor never gave my photos back.  Year after year I asked for them, but I think he wanted to keep them as exemplars?  I have the negatives somewhere, but I'm over it.  

When I got in to Radio and Television Arts, I left my photography practice and focused on video production.  It was many years before I even considered photography again, but I remember very well the moment is turned around.  My friend Alex came to my T-Shirt party and took pictures with a new canon digital SLR he bought.  The crummy digital camera my boss bought me at the CBC wasn't very good, had terrible battery life, so much so that I used disposable cameras because the batteries died when I did a piece on living donation. But the pictures he took wowed me in a big way. So much so that I researched and bought a Canon digital SLR the very next week.

Silhouette and Gwen Stefani added on second trip

After resigning from the CBC and going to teacher's college, the Labour Day weekend I went to New York City with a few girlfriends but went early and met them there.  In that time, I got my lay of the land.  The last time I had been to New York City as an adult was at a high school trip.  I took photos with my digital SLR and prized fisheye lens.  It wasn't till I got home and fooled around with the images that I realized I had a few really amazing shots.  One was the Vesuvio's café and the other was an overexposed digital image of Time Square which after I had corrected it, looked amazing.  I just needed some silhouettes for the really bright overexposed shots, the main billboard and Gwen Stefani.  


I decided to go back during the Thanksgiving weekend to take more images, see if Gwen was still up there, and get more shots.  My buddy Jay joined me, even though we had very different agendas.  I was on a mission to take photos, and he was going to tour and shop.  I do recall, however, and I don't even know how we managed this, but we met in Times Square around 3 or 4 in the morning, and as I worked, he just soaked it all in.  When I got home, I added another 6 or 7 images to my collection that I was proud of, but when I submitted my images to a group who was going to give each photographer they chose a room at the Gladstone, I decided to go over March Break to take even more photos.

Second trip, 4:30am in Times Square with the supportive Jay Garcia

That March Break was exhausting. From 7am till about midnight every night, I was out taking photos. I remember on the last day I went to the Statue of Liberty and had endured so many crazy and sometimes stressful situations (ask me about the Fire Taxi image I created) I was beat.  I remember sitting on the ferry and after it left, felt like just sitting there until I we arrived.  But as much as my feet hurt from the days of walking, I reminded myself that I was there to work.  So I got up and climbed the stairs as we left the port.  Sure enough, it wasn't very crowded on the top of the ferry and I got an amazing picture of the flag on the bow and Manhattan and Brooklyn in the distance.

My Chicago exhibition was interesting.  I took a night bus to Chicago to spend the day, and hope to get a single photo for the Contact submission.  The bus's heat broke down and I was stuck in Windsor until they could get us another bus, and only had about 6 hours to shoot once I got there, but it was blisteringly cold, so it ended up being enough.  The Uno's pizza (it's not really pizza) was delicious and kept me out of the cold.  

I returned in the new year during March Break and flew by Porter.  I arrived, unbeknown to me, on St Patrick's Day.  It was amazing!  And quite warm.  I had a similar experience, where I set my alarm for 5:30am to catch the sunrise at the Cloud Gate (the Bean) and when the alarm rang, I had to remind myself I was not there on vacation, but to work.  It paid off.  The Cloud Gate Bean is my most popular image, even though my favourite was American Gothic.

My third exhibition was supposed to be Los Angeles but I had a lot of pressure to do Toronto.  In the end I limited my Toronto images to Music related venues.  After 3 exhibitions in 3 years, I took a long hiatus and still haven't decided to go back into it.  Right now, I'm considering adding my images to websites that do phone covers and do the printing.  Printing ended up being the thorn in my side, and I rarely printed orders for my images.

So far, I haven't given my dad the credit he deserves for embracing my photography passion.  He did tons, as I mentioned, getting me into the Ontario College of Arts course and also let me use his old Minolta when I was a kid.  I still have lots of strange experimental photos with weird compositions from when I was 5-9 years old.  When the Minolta camera my parents bought me from Hong Kong was stolen by some kids while my friends and I played video games, my dad bought me a top of the line Nikon Camera.  The Minolta was one of the presents he got me that I used constantly, and I think he felt something might be lost if he punished me for my carelessness.  That gesture made me realize I had to take better care of my things, but also, that you shouldn't get too upset when bad things happen.  Hopefully they don't happen often.  

My mom's side of the family is mostly artists.  My cousins Ashraf and Shahd are both artists, no doubt inspired by our uncles Ihab and Nagy, critically acclaimed artists with long and prosperous careers.  The rest of the family is also artistically inclined even if they didn't pursue it.  But my art education came mostly from my dad, directly through visits to art galleries growing up, and indirectly by having tons of art books to flip through.  So that's how I became Adam Shax.  The letters S, H, and A were common in both my mom's maiden name and my dad's last name.  To credit both side of the family of influencing my artistic career, I came up with Shax, where the x represents the variable of either last name.  

And now I am teaching digital photography to a new generation.  It worked out quite well, in the end.

The Making of a Music Lover - The Teenage Years

Before this top 10 albums as a teen started making an appearance, I checked to see if The Pursuit of Happiness's Love Junk was on Apple Music.  It was, and so I listened to it.  Amazing combo of excellent melodies, sometimes awkward lyrics, like in Beautiful White, and awesome harmonies.  Moe Berg is one of my favourite songwriters, as subsequent albums proved.  Interestingly, their most popular song, I'm An Adult Now, is my least favourite song of theirs.  I bought Love Junk for, She's So Young.  But my favourite song on the album, which is haunting, was Walking In The Woods.  When I actually listened to the lyrics, it really made me reconsider my shyness with girls and the cost of not being vulnerable and taking a chance asking someone out.

1)  Love Junk  - The Pursuit of Happiness

Interestingly, the first time I saw The Pursuit of Happiness in concert was at the CNE Bandstand.  I went by myself.  My friends weren't interested in TPOH, who was opening for Gowan, nor were they interested in seeing Gowan.  It would be the first of 3 times I met Gowan.  I bought a T-Shirt at that concert, and had him sign it "O Ominus Spiritus".  He spelled Spiritus wrong.  The second time was at York Lanes's computer shop, to talk about electronic music.  Since I was only 1 if 4 who showed up,  we just stood in a circle and spoke to him about music.  The third time was by chance in Trois-Rivière for a Canada Day concert. Sass Jordan also played!  Strange Animal was why I bought the album, but I think Cosmetics, with that wicked bass line and Walking On Air were my favourite tracks.  But later in University I added his first, self-titled album to my collection, and it blows Strange Animal out of the water.  Keep Up The Fight, Send Me Energy,  Oceania, Come a Little Closer, and Jet White, to name a few, were all amazing.  The album seems to have been buried, and Youtube links deleted, so I'm glad I have it.

2) Gowan - Strange Animal

What Have I Done To Deserve by The Pet Shop Boys This remains my second favourite song of all time.  The first, which isn't on any album listed here, is She Sells Sanctuary by The Cult.  I also grew to love I Want To Wake Up.

3) Actually - Pet Shop Boys

I bought this album cassette in Bradford, Pennsylvania, based on the single When Smokey Sings but discovered it was full of amazing songs!  A truly amazing duo.  If When Smokey Sings doesn't make you want to sing and dance, I don't know what will.  And check out Be Near Me if you've never heard it. The Night You Murdered Love and King Without a Heart

4) Alphabet City - ABC

The second LP my parents bought me.  My dad heard how the album was breaking records in sales and he felt I should have it, since he was otherwise unable to mould or influence my musical tastes, and wanted me to fit in with my peers.  Loved. Every Song.  But I think I preferred Off The Wall later on in life.  Human Nature was probably the first ballad I ever loved, and my favourite song on the album.

5) Thriller - Michael Jackson

The first LP I called my own.  I recall a sleepover where one of the girls remarked that the album had a swear in it.  What's the swear?  On the lyrics dust jacket On And On And On (great story and lyrics) showed the swear.  When she pointed it out to me, and I looked at it and read it.  "Hell."  I was puzzled.  It wasn't as colourful as the swears I knew.  Although not stocked with ABBA Gold tracks, it's a solid album.

6) ABBA - Super Trouper

Another album I discovered in the Bradford, Pennsylvania area was Faith, by George Michael.  This cassette was given to me by my American girlfriend.  She showed me the Faith music video, and I was instantly hooked.  She liked his ass.  I liked the song.  But she took more pleasure, abashedly, playing, I want Your Sex.   The tables turned. I was a great album which I explored after bringing it home.  Father Figure mesmerized me.

7) Faith - George Michael

I was able to see Phil Collins at a Genesis concert.  I found out that Phil Collins was part of Genesis in Toronto, but only heard their albums in... well... Bradford, Pennsylvania.  My older "brother" Ed introduced me to their music, as well as YES.  I think I bought the Sussudio album in the early days of the single, and the title track would be part of my music exploration watching the CHUM FM Top 30 Countdown.  The only music video I remember watching after cub scouts was The Police's Don't Stand So Close To Me.  I remember years later when a friend played it for me, I thought... This is wrong.  It's supposed to be faster.  It was their '86 version, which is also great.

8) Sussudio - Phil Collins

Although I enjoyed Tears for Fears, it wasn't until this Best of album that I started listening to their music in earnest.  I became a huge fan.  When they started touring recently, I discovered their "Toronto" date was in Orillia.  I didn't want to see them at a Casino where people were comped tickets.  So I looked where else they were playing, and decided to go to New York City which proved to be amazing!  They remarked that they were emotional about playing here because it was where they first lived when they moved to America.  I remember being in Paris with my cousin Hazem, staying at in his hotel room when he was working there, and seeing their new song Break It Down Again and buying their album while I was there.  Expensive but worth it!

9) Tears Roll Down - Tears for Fears

I was watching MuchMusic and saw the music video for Vox.  I watched the same show later on just to listen to it again.  It was before the album was released, and I went to Sam the Record Man to buy it opening day.  Her second album only had 3 songs I liked, and I haven't really enjoyed much of her other music or style since.  But to me, Touch was a groundbreaking album, and for a kid who didn't like ballads, the songs on this album were amazing.  George Michael was the only other to draw me into ballad territory as strongly.  Songs like Steaming and Sad Clown were filled with emotion.  But the tracks with a male vocalist, such as Strange World, but most of all, Trust, blew me away.  The instrumental tracks are also amazing.  I went to see her by myself before I think anyone I knew knew her on the rotating stage of Ontario Place.

10) Touch - Sarah McLachlan

It's hard to not include Def Leppard in this list.  They might have come earlier but her we are after 10 albums.  Hysteria was introduced to me by a kid, on our first meeting.  My parents were friends with him, and he proceeded to play their music videos for me, and tell me the band's story.  I bought the album, and loved all the songs Sam played for me, as well as the Sheet music for Axel F, Pour Some Sugar On Me, and Armageddon It.  When I was on my Pacific Coast Highway cycle tour, I sang Animal to myself.  When I first saw them in concern, it was a weekday evening when I wasn't working because it was also the first day of the CBC Lockout.  I picketed for 12 hours before walking to the Molsen Amphitheatre to join my friend Paul.  I don't know how I managed to get through the concert and spend the entire performance on my feet.  A few years ago I went to see KISS, who I thought were opening for Def Leppard.  Turns out it was the other way around and I missed some of the Leppard performance.

BONUS) Hysteria - Def Leppard

Special Mention: A Decade of The Box - The Box and Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin -  Pornograffiti - Extreme -  Gordon - Bare Naked Ladies - 90125 - Yes - Breakin' Soundtrack - Various, Particularly Tour De France by Kraftwerk (but I prefer the 10 Speed cover since that's the one used in the film).

The Making of a Book Addict - A 12 Step Program

I found the following quote on a newspaper clipping not long after my dad passed away when I was going through his stuff.  He had not only clipped it from the newspaper, but also inserted it into a clear plastic envelope, kind of like the stiff one you'd get for your bank pass. In fact, it was exactly like the one you'd get for your bank pass.  It was a plastic bank pass holder.

“A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them. It is a wrong to his family. He cheats them! Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it.”  - Horace Mann

I definitely grew up surrounded by books.  There was a large bookcase my father designed for the stairwell and I remember being so young I'd read on the steps, as the books were often too large and heavy for me to take vary far, and steps are like built-in seats for the home.  I particularly remember the Collier's Encyclopedia which was on the second shelf, allowing me easy access.  One of the volumes had transparent pages and you could leaf through the different layers of the human body.  Skin, musculature, blood vessels and bones.  There were many art books, too, and I became familiar with the works of Dali, Michelangelo and Picasso, among other, before I could even spell their names.

What is interesting about being a voracious reader is that I was never a strong reader.  I'm still not.  I can spend lots of time reading, but I don't do it very fast.  Perhaps just a little faster than the speed in which I talk.  I remember in grade 3 being at the reading table with students who were not proficient. It didn't bother me, but I found it hard to read beside the kid who had to speak the words while he read, which is hard when you're using your inner voice.  In grade 6, I was a little bummed that only the gifted students were offered the chance to read a draft of a soon-to-be-published book, "The Minerva Program."  I eventually bought it and thought it was pretty good, but not so much that I felt bad about not being chosen to read it.  In any case, despite not having been a proficient reader, I'm glad I never found it unenjoyable.  When I found a Penthouse magazine in grade 7, I showed it to a friend of mine in an effort to impress him, but he was unfazed and unimpressed, because his dad had them laying about and he had access to them any time he wanted.  He did introduce me to the Penthouse Forum section of the magazine, which is basically sex stories, and I was fascinated, but I also felt like it was wrong.  Not that it prevented me from reading them, though.  When sexual education was lacking in schools, Penthouse Forum certainly filled in a lot of blanks.

Of all the times I ever observed my dad, the most common was of him reading.  He didn't just read, though.  He often has a variety of utensils and stickers to properly deface his books with highlights, underlining and little round stickers to mark the most impressive passages and thoughts.  He also used a hole punch to create notches in the paper to allow easy access to chapters, kind of like old large dictionaries, to find the letter quickly.  Adequately vandalized, they became personal references of deep meaning.

Today, I mark up my books simply with a highlighter.  And I use asterisks instead of little round stickers.  But it wasn't really until University that I started reading non-fiction.  Unless you include magazines like OWL and chickaDEE magazines, so we may as well start there.

I recently bought this incredibly photograph by Chris Albert called Queen-Spadina-AD88.  One of the main reasons I bought it was because it was linked to my father's regular visits to Edward's Bookstore in the building on Queen Street.  We often went on Sundays, and although stores were not allowed to be open on Sundays, the storeowner fought long and hard against the bylaw or bill or whatever prevented him from opening on Sundays.  In a way, it was our church, which is interesting because a friend of mine recently asked if the reason I read so many books was in place of religious texts, because most of the books I read are about seeking guidance, connected to human psychology, philosophies of life and living.  Further to that, a girl I was dating who was extremely religious was jealous of my lack of fear, because it seemed everything she was trying to achieve through religious practice, I already possessed, and she didn't understand how I was able to attain it in my life without God.  She was incredulous that I had found a way of being that was completely in line with what she hoped to achieve without religious texts.   But I digress.  Edward's bookstore didn't have many books that interested me, but they always had OWL and chickaDEE and my dad bought me a copy every time.  It was where I bought my first Tintin comic, Tintin in America, which I didn't read for many, many years.  I was too distracted by the love triangle of Archie Andrews to pay any mind to Tintin who only had a dog.  But one lazy weekend, without finding anything else to do, I decided to give it a try, and I was immediately hooked.  By then, I was old enough to take the streetcar downtown by myself.  I was 11 years old, and would take my allowance money to The World's Biggest Bookstore to buy books, and when I saw the carousel of Tintin comics in paperback for the low price of $4.99, I slowly but surely added them to my collection until I had every story.  By now I was also heavily into Gordon Korman and Beatrice Thurman Hunter books.  The latter was introduced a few years earlier when she visited my school and read from her book, That Scatterbrain Booky.  I bought her subsequent books through the Scholastic book buying program.

One thing that was always true, and something I may have taken for granted, was that buying books was fully supported by my dad.  He would buy me any books I wanted though Scholastic and when we went to bookstores together, but I think he was secretly pleased that I would also spend my own money buying books and comics.  I remember with great clarity a small token of advice I find true to this day.  An expensive book with even a nugget of information that you find useful is worth the expense, but a book that costs pennies that you don't read is a big waste of money.

Scholastic was probably the most exciting and memorable time in grade school.  I remember distinctly being anxious about when my order would be fulfilled, and how absolutely elated I was when the teacher announced that the books had arrived and would be distributed.  Unlike amazon, it would take 4 to 6 weeks.  And if it took longer for some reason, I noticed.  I still have many of the books from that time.  I recently rediscovered a book about whales I remember flipping though and remember the smell and images from within.  And although I never saw The Empire Strikes Back until maybe 4 or 5 years ago, I had the book and remembered that C-3PO was in pieces, and that there was a winter scene.

Getting lost in fiction was common, and I absolutely devoured the Bruno and Boots series by Gordon Korman, most of which I bought from The World's Biggest Bookstore.  I graduated to Sidney Sheldon when I was in High School after watching a mini-series of one of his books, "If Tomorrow Comes."  I went on to buy many of his other books from The World's Biggest Bookstore, and although they were thick, long stories, I could easily get lost in them.

Although I enjoyed learning from books, most non-fiction was prescribed by high school teachers and university professors.  But this time at university jump-started my interest in non-fiction.  I think my dad was reading Camille Paglia and when I read a bit here and there, I think my love of non-fiction grew.  I started discovering that I could learn anything I wanted from books before that, though.  In high school, I loved learning on my own terms, so I would skip class to research more whatever topic was briefly mentioned in class.  My curiosity was definitely the gateway to a love of life-long learning.

These days, I am trying to be more selective when I buy books.  I'm also trying to get rid of books I'll either never have the time to read, or have no interest in keeping.   Even then it's hard.  And perhaps one day, I'll start reducing my collection of highlighters.

I feel it is fitting to dedicate this post to my father, one of the fastest readers I know, with a photographic memory, and with the largest private collection of books I've ever encountered.  He could ready a 200 page book in his native tongue in a single day and a single sitting.  I would love to invite you to share the book that had the biggest impact on your life in the comments.

The Making of a Chef - Kitchen Skills

As the story goes, I was about 5 years old and my mom was away on a trip.  My dad did not enjoy cooking and was relatively hopeless in the kitchen aside from making omelettes, yet unable to remember whether to put the egg into boiling water before, or after the water started to boil.  So, with my mom out of town, he preferred taking me to the diner in the plaza by our condo than attempting to fix me something to eat.  When he asked me what I wanted to eat, I replied, "Soup, please."  I was a polite child.  "Adam, why don't we go to The Kingsway to order something?"
"No daddy.  I want soup."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes daddy.  Soup please."
"But Adam... I don't know how to make soup."  He felt that this line of reasoning would allow him to sidestep my insistence on having soup.  He would have been better off suggesting I order soup at the diner.  But my reply demonstrated that I was neither intimidated by, nor ignorant of how to manage your way in the kitchen.  "Just read the instructions on the can, daddy."  That settled that.

As I got older, since my dad and I rarely helped in the preparation of meals, we often ate out to give my mom a break.  Also, my father loved exploring Toronto's culinary scene, and was quick to bring us to fancy places, or well reviewed places if he managed to read about them.  I remember eating out was often an experience.  The rotating restaurant atop the Harbour Castile Westin, or the Old Hsin Kuang Restaurant were just a few of the places we would visit, and it perked my palate.  

As I got older, in high school, waiting for my mom to get home from work to eat often resulted in a growling stomach, and so I started making Kraft Dinner in my early teens, giving me a head start on university students.  It didn't take long before I graduated to Hamburger Helper.  I then realized that I could buy my own pasta, my own sauce and spices, and started to make interesting discoveries about flavour, noting that it tasted better if the meat had a chance to brown, and if I used too much beef at once leaving little room for evaporation, the resulting juice boiled the meat and was less flavourful.  

We continued to eat out as a family, and as my palate became more sophisticated, and I was able to identify the ingredients in dishes, I was able to go home and replicate them.  When I was at Ryerson, my friend Sathis from school (who was visiting from Singapore on an exchange) prepared a meal for me, and taught me how to make an Indian Curry dish.  When I started making it for my dad, he noted that we no longer had to visit Indian restaurants since he loved my curry meals so much.  I also received some culinary inspiration from a close Persian friend, Mehrdad who taught me the secrets of cooking fluffy basmati rice, and how subtle flavours in food could be just as wonderful as pungent flavours.

There was a certain degree of fearlessness in the kitchen, and I was lucky to have started experimenting early in my youth.  Our trip to New Orleans when I was in University resulted in a shopping spree of spices which would be added to spaghetti sauces, not to mention a variety of scotch bonnet hot sauces.  By now I had a high tolerance for heat.  But I was first introduced to spice when I tried tabasco sauce for the first time in an Italian restaurant, and loved how vinegary it was. So, I bought some. In order to get more vinegar flavour, I kept adding more and more, even though it meant managing more and more heat.  Eventually, I got used to it.  My buddy Fred in Bradford loved hot wings and deep fried them to perfection and doused them in Frank's Red Hot.  Coupled with the spices and hot sauces from New Orleans and my love of vinegary Tabasco, I was well on my way to having a high tolerance for spicy heat.  I've done both Armageddon and Death wings at Duff's.  But I moderate the heat these days to avoid burning a hole in my tongue.

Although I haven't stopped cooking over the years, I recently started upping my game.  I'm also starting to embrace recipes and modifying them as necessary.  I also no longer snub my nose at recipes with few ingredients that seem simple, but which deliver a solid punch of flavours.  I recently added Sous Vide preparation to the repertoire and will be spending the year learning some classic techniques and recipes with a focus on sauces and preserving.  The last part so I may require even less use of a car and always have good food on hand.

As far as cooking courses go, I did take an Indian cooking course at George Brown and took my indian food to the next level.  I also took a one day course at The Little Mexican Cooking School in Puerto Morelos, Mexico.  To this day, I try not to order fresh fish ceviche for fear it won't be as good as mine.  But I can't take credit for it.  The recipe was given to me, and it's pretty simple.  I think perhaps restaurant just overthink it.

I hope you will comment if you enjoyed reading this, and share a link to your favourite recipe or your own adventures in the kitchen!  What do you enjoy most about cooking?  How did you get involved in food preparation?  Or how did you manage to get this far without learning how to cook?  Please comment below!