[0xfeba]

as someone who divorced and didn't want to be the 'mac and cheese dad', I found an older edition of "Williams Sonoma Cooking at Home" a really good beginner book. It goes over basic ingredients, seasonality, cooking methods, cooking tools, proper measuring, and complementary sides before hopping into recipes. I found all of these very valuable as _tons_ of recipes assume basic knowledge of it.

A lot of the recipes are quite involved though so now I tend to go for simpler ones, or pick-and-choose.