My cooking developed from

• Learning how to make French bread from scratch from my Mother;
• Being fascinated by Yan Can as he whipped up Chinese food, a favourite of mine;
• Getting a cookbook full of Chinese recipes and trying them out;
• Taking a course at George Brown in Culinary Arts, which was fascinating and eye-opening;
• Watching the original Iron_Chef;
• Watching Jamie Oliver while he took a bunch of kids from disadvantaged neighborhoods and put them through a cooking school boot camp, then used them to run a restaurant in London -- awesome; and
• Cooking a new low-carb low-fat high-protein diet for me and my wife.

I just picked up a rotisserie oven and tried it out last weekend .. mmmmm rotisserie chicken. Fantastic.