Pasta is a great dish to get started, because you can expand upon it in tiny steps that also teaches you other cooking basics. Such as how to:
- cook up ground beef/turkey/pork (“brown”)
- sautee onions (“caramelize”)
- sautee vegetables of choice (peppers, mushrooms, kale, spinach, summer squash, eggplant, etc)
- mince garlic
Each time you make pasta, additionally cook one of the above add-ins to experiment with. Cook it in a separate pot/pan, then mix with the sauce once complete (if you pour the sauce directly into the meat/vegetable’s pot/pan, that’s known as “deglazing,” as it picks up all the yummy brown stuff stuck to the bottom of the pan, and also makes the pot/pan easier to clean later!)
Also, and this is a biggie, if you never had anyone teach you how to cook (it’s unclear from your post if you did), you missed out on a lot of critical kitchen safety instructions, such as how to not cut yourself on knives and other bladed kitchen equipment, how to not start accidental fires on the stovetop or in the oven (and what to do if one happens anyway), food-borne illness prevention, etc. Unfortunately I don’t have any specific resources for you, but please look into kitchen safety before diving in too deep! Don’t let it scare you off though; remember billions of people have been cooking around the world for thousands of years, and while there are dangers, basic safety precautions go a long way (also the modern kitchen makes cooking safer than ever).
I was wondering where the animal abuse charges were in all this.