Learning to cook

When I got married a little more than 7 years ago, I could cook two things: spaghetti and African Chicken (I'll post the recipe if anyone's interested, it's really good). Since my husband is a truck driver and not home often, I didn't really have to cook for him often, so those dishes and the occasional takeout or frozen dinner worked. When I was on my own, I often had a bag of popcorn or a tuna fish sandwich for dinner. What I'm saying is-- I didn't cook. Then I got pregnant and all of a sudden I had to eat, and it had to be good food. So I decided to start teaching myself to cook. Watching Good Eats gave me enough knowledge to give me confidence, but I still wasn't sure what I was doing. So I decided to master one dish at a time. I started with ham, cooking the same dish about once every two weeks and then living off of the leftovers for about a week or so. The next dish was ribs, then roast pork. By then I was completely sick of pork, so I switched to chicken. I've mastered enough dishes by now to have a varied roster for my family, at least with the meats. The one thing that hasn't changed is the vegetables. Every meat dish, no matter how much prep or how it tastes, is accompanied by frozen vegetables that have been microsteamed. Granted, they're healthy and the kids eat them up (they're better about eating vegetables than meat, believe it or not), but they're BORING!

So now I'm going to learn to cook some different vegetable dishes. Once I find a good recipe, I'm going to learn ratatouille. Split pea soup is on the list. I need a few more, ones that are child friendly and not too complicated. If you have any good suggestions please let me know. Don't worry about recipes, I google cook all the time. What I need are suggestions for dishes that you make that might be good for me to make. Just no stewed tomatoes, I've never been able to eat them and don't think I ever will. ;)