Some tricks of the trade:

Read the entire recipe first, carefully. Make sure you understand what you have to do every step of the way. If you don't understand, pick a different recipe at this point.

Take out all your ingredients and measure them and place in little bowls in the order they will be used. Pretend you're on a cooking show and you have to have everything ready. This will prevent you from getting overwhealmed if you need something quickly.

Make sure that you have enough time to make the dish. If you're in a hurry and something goes wrong, you'll get all flustered. When reading the directions, calculate how much time everything takes and then double it. Allow for that...if you eat early, who cares. Or if it takes longer than expected it's ok if you don't then need to run out the door.

Read cookbooks - they really give you tons of info. Vocabulary, tips, etc.

Don't expect that everything is going to be fabulous right away - most recipes take time to improve to your own tastes. Follow the recipe exactly the first time, tweak it after that.

Don't think that every great dish has to have all homemade ingredients. It's ok to use short cuts and some premade stuff. You put it together, so it's made by you. Some great lasagna's start with jar sauce. Shredded rotisserie chicken is yummy added to things instead of poaching your own chicken, etc.

Good luck!

For me, the thought of learning to cook was very intimidating. There are still things I don't know much about, like baking and grilling, but I know from experience that it's just a matter of time and practice. Most things will turn out to be edible on your first try, so that's the good news. Perfecting a recipe comes with practice.

Start out slow with basic recipes. For instance, potato salad is basically taters, mayo or salad dressing, and hard boiled eggs. There are dozens and dozens of tater salad recipes but they are all based on those 3 basic ingredients. Once you know the basics then you can tweak a recipe however you like.

There are two cookbooks and one website that are great for the absolute beginner - Joy of Cooking, The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, and www.allrecipes.com. The books describe everything about cooking for the beginner, and the website has thousands of searchable recipes that are user rated (4 1/2 to 5 star recipes are a good start) with user comments that are very helpful, and there's an online recipe box too and other nifty things too.

It's important to have the proper tools: decent pots and pans, a variety of SHARP knives, cooking utensils, etc. You can buy additional items as needed. This is all described in the cookbooks.

Be sure you have all of your ingredients and tools (bowls, utensils, etc.) before you begin your recipe.

Herbs and spices are expensive, so don't buy them all at once. The cookbooks talk about herbs and spices, and other ingredients in detail, which will help you. Hint: fresh ground pepper tastes SO much better than already ground pepper. The difference is *definately* noticable. I wish someone had told me that from the start. One more hint: brown sugar is nothing more than regular granulated sugar and molasses mixed together. Do it yourself and save money. Ok, one last hint: there is beet sugar and cane sugar. It doesn't matter which you use unless you are making candy or carmelizing the sugar like in flan or kettle corn (in which case use cane sugar). It's a chemical composition thing, but they otherwise look and taste the same and either one can be used.

Good grocery shopping skills take time and practice, so don't expect to be an expert right off the bat. Give yourself time, you'll learn as you go.

Cooking is part science and part art. *Many* recipes do not require you to be exact, so if a stew calls for this many cups of carrots and that many tablespoons of onion and 2 lbs of meat, don't worry about exact measurements. A lot of things can be eyeballed (except when baking and candy making, which is fairly exact). So for the most part, don't fret about exact measurements.

Most freezers attached to the fridge keep foods just below freezing (32*) and are not meant for long term storage. A manual defrost chest freezer (deep freeze) is an excellent investment that you should consider once you are cooking regularly. Buying and cooking in large quantities, then freezing, will save you time and money.

As was mentioned, allow yourself plenty of time to prepare your meals until you get the hang of it.

Be forewarned that cooking from scratch can be time consuming, messy for your kitchen, and will dirty lots of dishes. It also takes time to plan out meals, create grocery lists, etc. In time you'll learn how to coordinate your recipes so that you use up all of your perishables, but at first you'll probably need only a portion of something, not knowing what to do with the rest, and end up throwing it out. Don't worry, it's part of the learning process.

The cookbooks I suggested will explain the different cuts of meat, the best way to prepare those cuts, etc. Same goes for how to use fruits and veggies and all that.

You can make your own baby food easily and save a small fortune (assuming you have a baby). All you need is a grinder and/or food processor.

A gas stove is so much better to cook on than an electric stove because you can immediately adjust the heat with precision control.

I won't have any spare time after today, but I do hope I've been able to help in some small way. It helps to have a husband that will encourage and support you as you learn, and give you gentle but honest feedback. Don't feel pressured to be an expert on your first try. It takes time and practice. I wish you the very best, and congratulations on your expanded family!

Now you have the internet, and it's wonderful for recipe searching. I, too, really like allrecipes.com. I also like recipezaar.com. Every morning, I go to allrecipes and look at the Daily Recipes. I like reading people's comments, what they do to make the dish better. If you find a recipe that's five stars and lots of people have reviewed it, you know you have a winner. Also, if you have something in your refrigerator you want to use and want some ideas, you can use their "ingredients search". On recipezaar, I look at the latest reviews. There are always 400-500 so I never get past the first few pages, but I almost always find something I want to try. I copy and paste these into a document (if you use Word, use "paste special" and choose "unformatted text" so that your paste function doesn't bring over links and such) and then save the document for when I'm in the mood to cook. I think both sites offer cooking lessons.

If you have something specific that you want to make, search for a you-tube lesson on it. There's some good pizza-making instructions on you-tube. I'm linking something you might be interested in, but you can Google up a lot of interesting things. There are also lots of cooking blogs. One that I like a lot is www.pioneerwomancooks.com. I don't know Ree, but I have met her brother Mike, and her dad, who is a local doctor.

As far as comparison pricing at the grocery store goes, just stay alert, pay attention to price per ounce as they're changing the package sizes now, and read the sales ads. You'll be up to speed in no time!

I'd chop up a bunch of onions and garlic and just keep trying until you start to get a feel for it. Put a few tablespoons of oil in a pan and turn the stove on medium to start with. When you hold your hand a few inches over the pan and feel heat, it's ready. Onions usually end up in bigger pieces (because they're bigger to start with), so I add those first. Don't be doing anything else while you cook at first. If you're focused, you'll smell the onions if the pan gets too hot, and you can turn down the heat before they burn. Also if you see any smoke come out of the pan, or you hear loud hissing, turn down the heat. If you hear no noise and the onions look the same as when you put them in (they're not turning clear or golden brown), turn the heat up. After the onions cook for a few minutes, add the garlic. With garlic, the smaller you chop it, the stronger it tastes. When the garlic starts to get light brown, you're all done. Don't be tempted to wait for it to get nicely browned, because it goes from golden to burnt in about five seconds. From this point, you can make a billion things. You could add chopped butternut squash and chicken broth to make soup, add spinach to make garlic spinach, or add ground beef, tomato sauce, and dry spices to make chili.

In terms of browning meat, you want the pan hotter than for onions and garlic. Put it over medium high heat, and use vegetable oil (corn, peanut, soybean, or canola all work). When you flick water at the pan and it hisses and spits back at you, you're ready. Pat dry and salt the meat (and add dry spices, if you like) and put it in the pan. It will hiss pretty violently. If you have a splatter guard, that can come in handy. If the oil starts to look dark, or black smoke comes out of the pan, get the meat out of the pan, dump the oil, and pour in new oil. When you lift the corner and peek under the meat and see a nice medium brown, it's ready to flip. If the meat is more than an inch thick or so, after you brown the second side, add liquid (water, stock, beer, BBQ sauce, whatever) and turn the heat to the lowest setting, so that you just see tiny bubbles, cover, and cook for 10 minutes or so for something like chicken peices. If it's something huge like a pork shoulder or a pot roast, it will take much longer.

I think a lot of people feel ashamed about not knowing how to cook- I bet that keeps tons of people out of the kitchen. I think you're at an advantage, really, because a lot of people are so afraid of screwing up that they stick to the same boring foods their parents taught them to make. You're a blank slate! And we believe in you :-)

Look for chicken, beef, and vegetable broth on sale and lay in a big supply. You can make a variety of tasty soups with diced leftover veggies, spices, and chopped cooked meat, seafood, or sausage added.

Keep a big bowl in your refrigerator, and dump leftovers into it from meals during the week for soup days. Add diced potatoes, or rice or pasta for a thicker soup.

Canned chicken, chicken broth and flour tortillas cut into strips make quick chicken and noodles. Add chopped carrots and or peas as you desire.

A bread machine is a wonderful purchase, either new or used. I keep two recipes magneted to the refrigerator. One is for a soft a white Amish Bread and the other uses a mix of whole wheat and white flour and is great with soup. It's a osemary bread, that I have seen called the Macaroni Grill bread recipe. A loaf of homemade bread costs less than 50 cents. Throw your bread ingredients in the machine at night, put your soup ingredients in the crockpot on low and go to sleep. The next day all you have to do is enjoy.

Don't buy tiny pricy boxes of brand name spices on the spice aisle at the supermarket. In California you can find many of them much cheaper under the hispanic brand names, usually found on the back or side walls of stores, near produce. You can also find many spices in bulk sections of health food stores, often in specialty mixes, such as Italian, Spanish, or chinese. These are much cheaper than the prepackaged brands. You will also find good prices on spices in Dollar stores and on spices and other foods in Big Lots.

You can make your own salad dressings very easily, and avoid the chemicals and preservatives of the commercial brands. For Italian, mix one part oil to two or three parts of red wine or balsamic vinegar, add Italian spices and garlic salt to taste, and a bit of prepared mustard, which helps to keep your dressing from separating. Shake well, and your'e good to go.

Explore meatless stir-fry's. They are very nutritious, and inexpensive if you use fresh veggies and chop them yourself. Or you can buy bags of frozen stir fry mixtures. Prepare Minute Rice, which is a great time saver. By the time the rice is ready, your stir-fry will be too.

Beans and rice also make a satisfying meal, too, with a salad on the side. If you add just a small bit of animal protein, either as flavoring for the beans, or on the side, like a slice of cheese, the bean proteins convert to the more perfect state of protein that meat provides an cheap protein is always a good thing. Cut up a couple of slices of bacon, and cook it with some diced onion until the onion is transparent Put that it in your crockpot with two cups of beans and about 4 cups of water and cook on low for 8 hours. Add a pinch of ginger to prevent the bean toots, but don't add salt until the beans are as tender as you want them to be. Salting too soon keeps the beans from getting to the tender stage.

If you like lasagne, look for the noodles that don' have to be cooked first. They will have a recipe on the box panel. Use purchased spaghetti sauce and pregrated cheeses and it all goes together quickly.

You will also find that you can buy big bags of things like meatballs, breaded fish fillets, and bonelss chicken breasts abd these are huge time savers to have around...very important for new mothers!

Google for cooking blogs, and bookmark those that seem to be most helpful. You'll get the hang of it all faster than you think.

Jan

Some basic techniques I'd try to learn:

- Sauté vegetables
- Steam vegetables
- Brown meat
- Bake meat in the oven, with or without coating or marinating (I like to bake chicken, in particular, on a rack in a pan. It lets the fat drip away and the skin gets crisp on its own.)
- Simmer meat and other ingredients, as in a stew or soup
- Make basic starches, such as pasta, rice, and potatoes

If you can do these things, you can combine foods in all sorts of ways.

Don't try to do them all at once. Jessicavanderhoff gave you good advice to start with the onions, garlic and meat. With just those two techniques, you could, for example:

- Sauté onions and garlic, brown some ground beef, and add it all to a jar of spaghetti sauce to serve over pasta with a salad. (You asked about freezing. If I were going to freeze this, I'd cook, say, two pounds of meat, 3-4 onions, and 5-6 cloves of garlic. Then I'd divide the whole thing into thirds, fill two Zip-loc bags (or, for me, Tupperware containers) with 1/3 each, then put the remaining 1/3 into a saucepan and add the spaghetti sauce. When you want to use the other portions, you could defrost in the microwave or overnight in the fridge.)

- Sauté onions, garlic, sweet red peppers and mushrooms (in that order). Serve over toasted French bread and sprinkle some cheese on the hot vegetables to melt for veggie subs.

- Sauté onions and garlic, brown some ground turkey, add a can of drained black beans, a can of corn, a jar of salsa, and a tablespoon of chili powder, then serve in warm flour tortillas with grated cheese. (I make this all the time, and often use a rotisserie chicken instead of ground turkey. Just shred about one cup of chicken for this recipe. I usually make 2-3 times what we need for dinner. Sometimes I make up burritos and freeze them (great to throw in a lunch for someone who has access to a microwave), sometimes I just leave the bean mixture in the fridge and we eat it during the week for lunches.)

You get the idea. You'll want to start adding herbs and spices at some point, but even if you just use fresh pepper and a bit of salt, the food will taste good.

Don't dismiss easier things, either. For example, shred a rotisserie chicken and divide it into thirds. Mix 1/3 of the chicken with bottled barbecue sauce (and onions and garlic!) in a saucepan, heat over a medium-low heat, and make barbecue chicken sandwiches. Mix another 1/3 with jarred chicken gravy, add a few handsful of frozen peas and carrots (and maybe some onions and garlic ...), serve over biscuits made from refrigerated dough. With the last 1/3, sauté onions, garlic, sweet red peppers and mushrooms, add the chicken to heat, add a bottled Asian sauce (or make a simple sauce by mixing a heaping tablespoon of cornstarch with 1/2 cup water, 1/4 cup soy sauce, and ginger to taste), then cook until heated. Serve over rice.

I realize this post is way too long, and I'm worried you'll be overwhelmed. Really, almost anything you do will taste better and cost less than fast food, as well as being better for you. Good luck!