Elevate your cooking with this beginner advice

Almost half of US consumers' food budget, and just under a third of Canadians' is spent on meals prepared outside the home. But cooking isn't some exclusive skill: anyone can do it! We'll give you some tips.

• Nothing will boost your confidence in your cooking skills more than seeing happy, satisfied faces at your dinner table. While it helps to ask everyone what their favourite dishes are, you can't always trust what people say off the top of their head.
• A more reliable way is to observe what dishes people enjoy at restaurants or at someone else's house.
• Consult your cookbooks or surf food sites online for similar recipes and surprise people by duplicating their favourite dishes at home.

• Many cooking attempts can be complicated if you don't read all of the directions first. For example, you might suddenly realize in the middle of a recipe that you have to cream the butter... and it's rock-hard in the fridge.
• Another common mishap is forgetting to preheat the oven or realizing that you're missing a key ingredient.
• Always set aside the proper amount of time for a recipe, and start by following ingredient lists exactly. For example, Southern-style barbecue requires a particular cut of meat and can take hours to properly cook. If you mess up these requirements, you can end up with meat that's tough and unpalatable. You can start getting creative once you've built up your culinary chops.

• Warehouses won't tell you this, but sometimes an item costs the same or even less in regular stores. Before you buy 50 cans of tuna in bulk, do some calculations to make sure that you're actually saving money on each unit.
• Consider storage. If you don't have ample room in your fridge and cupboards, it may not be a good idea to buy in bulk.
• Pay attention to expiration dates. There's no sense in buying a huge amount of cheese to save some money if you end up throwing half of it away.

Cooking can seem intimidating, but it really isn't. Anyone can cook (they really, really can). So find a simple recipe that sounds good to you, and go get your feet wet in the kitchen. You can save money, enjoy healthier meals, and discover what a pleasure cooking can be.

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