Creativity - Cooking lessons

Today i had my first ever cooking lesson. I thought it would be a good idea to learn how to cook at least a few dishes as in university i don't want to be one of those people who lives off of either other people's cooking, or junk food. And with my mom being such a good cook and all, i thought i would ask her how to teach me.

My first ever dish was pasta with a simple tomato sauce, plus a nice salad on the side. It's not hard, i know, but let me tell you, i am TERRIBLE at cooking, so i thought i would start with something easy.

So first i had to make the pasta sauce. I started off by heating up some olive oil in a saucepan. At the same time i finely chopped some garlic, and once the oil was hot enough i added them in. I had to make sure that it was on a low heat, though, as the thing my mom told me was that the secret to cooking garlic is that it must be cooked slowly. If not, it apparently gets all bitter and nasty, and of course i didn't want that. Alright, so i had to wait about 10-15 minutes until the garlic was golden brown, and then i added in two tins of peeled tomatoes (that's the way my mom does it and to be honest, i was thankful for not having to peel all those tomatoes). I then added some salt and pepper, and a tiny amount of sugar, as my mom said that the sugar makes the sauce very nice. I turned the heat slightly up until the sauce started bubbling, after which i turned it down very slightly so that it was only bubbling a small, small amount. I let this cook for about 20 minutes. While this was cooking, i put some water into a big pot (enough water so that all the pasta could be covered) and turned the heat up to the fullest. Once it has started boiling, i put some salt in and then put all the pasta into the pot. This i let cook at a high heat (so that the water is constantly bubbling) until the pasta was al dente. This took about 10-12 minutes. Once the pasta was done, i drained it using a sieve and then combined the pasta and the sauce together in the big pot. At the very last minute i added in 7 basil leaves, which i tore up by hand and then mixed in. And voila!

I also made a salad at the same time, which had lettuce leaves, tomato, half a large onion and a nice dressing of vinegar and olive oil. My mom helped me quite a lot on this, as i have never done it before and was not sure about much of the processes. For example, i had no idea how to cut an onion properly, so she showed me how to do that. And also, i wasn't quite sure on how much of the vinegar and olive oil to add in, so she mixed the dressing for me. Though, i have made sure to take it all to memory, and hopefully next week i will be able to do the salad by myself!