Reddit reviews Jamie's Food Revolution: Rediscover How to Cook Simple, Delicious, Affordable Meals

If you're just starting, you might want to check out Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Cookbook. It's got a good overview of what a well stocked pantry needs and the a really wonderful variety of recipes from easy to complex. There's also some nice recipes for condiments that can be used for any dish.

Might be a mobile link but here

Edit: link fixed

I would start with this book:

Jamie's Food Revolution: Rediscover How to Cook Simple, Delicious, Affordable Meals

Dead simple, and years later I still have many of the recipes in my rotation. He really gets delicious easy cooking. The salmon tikka knocks people's socks off. Any of the stews are great. Something like this is good as well:

This is a Cookbook: Recipes For Real Life

Jamie Oliver has done a lot of great cookbooks for home cooks. Jamie's Food Revolution has a broad range of recipes - all healthy, affordable, and easy. I also recommend his early Naked Chef books. I've been really into food and cooking since I was a kid, but I feel that Oliver really improved my technique and style more than any other cookbook author.

I did that too. Here's a tip: Buy a few good cookbooks! Not crazy gourmet ones that require lots of ingredients or big fat ones without any pictures, ones that are meant for beginners, students, young people, working moms, or single people. Keep in mind, lots of recipes are for a family of four. When cooking for yourself, just use half the ingredients and have leftovers for the next day!

I bought this book by Jamie Oliver (I gave you a US link, since I see from your shopping cart that you've chosen American snack food) for my roommate while in Germany. At age 30, he still hadn't learned how to cook for himself. Absolutely great, lots of pictures, easy, tasty, basic recipes that were surprisingly easy for him to tackle on his own.

/r/EatCheapAndHealthy/

Honestly, you don't have to go out of your way to actually cook fresh food, as a lot of it can be eaten raw if you're busy or don't know hw to cook. You can make big salads with lots of stuff on them. You can take fruits and vegetables (cut up) to school or work with you. You can eat cut up fruit and yogurt/cottage cheese for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

If you want to learn how to cook from fresh, you can get more gourmet-stye cookbooks instead of Betty Crocker or Joy of Cooking style cookbooks.

One good advocate of people changing their cooking habits is gourmet chef Jamie Oliver. He cooks simple guy-gourmet style meals, often using stuff out of his garden. He has several books that teach cooking from fresh for people who want to (1) learn gourmet cooking and (2) learn how to cook from fresh.

Everyone can cook, just grab some Jamie Oliver's recipes book, illustrated with all the tips to actually cook healthier.

http://www.amazon.com/Jamie-Olivers-Meals-Minutes-Revolutionary/dp/1401324428/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323524229&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Jamies-30-Minute-Meals-Jamie-Oliver/dp/0718157672/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1323524229&sr=8-2
http://www.amazon.com/Jamies-Food-Revolution-Rediscover-Affordable/dp/1401310478/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1323524229&sr=8-3

Just look at the recipes and do them. Although some recipes gets a lot of olive oil and stuff that seems to have too many calories, it doesn't, the average calories count of these recipes is around 700kcal.

I've started to cook my own meals, although I knew how to cook some basic things, these books and the app for iPhone (20 minute meals) just got me kicking. I'm eating a lot healthier and tastier food than ever.

P.S.: broccoli and garlic rules. :P