Cooking help!!

Ok, here's the deal. I'm 18 years old. My mom cooks 2-3 times a week and we order out a LOT. It's terrible. It's unhealthy. My mom is lazy sometimes (a great mother, doesn't like to cook, no judgement) so I try to order healthy things. I usually get sushi once a week. Once a week I get a salad from this local place with fruit and nuts. I've been doing alright. Money's not really an issue though it IS expensive and I'm sure with the economy my mom would want to cut back.

I decided I want to cook for my family. I need hellllllllllp. I've never made anything more complicated than egg whites! Sometimes I'll grill a piece of fish and throw some salsa on it. Nothing elaborate.

I decided what I want to cook and now I just need LOTS of advice. I'm cooking for 2 people so I want the whole dish to be:

2 cups of whole wheat pasta, 8 oz shrimp, a bunch of homemade pasta sauce, spinach, and portabella mushrooms

sound like a good balanced meal? What should I do? Where do I start? How do I make pasta sauce! Helllllllllllllllp. Also, what are some other meals I could cook for my family? This is something I'd really like to make a habit of since I'm getting older. When I'm on my own in a couple years I'd like to be able to cook for myself/roommates/a boyfriend/my husband/my family. 

TIP.... have all your ingredients handy prepared/chopped/ trimmed and ready to add to the pan before you start cooking. It means you're not searching round the kitchen for something whilst your pan contents are burning...

Home-made tomato sauce...

Heat a teaspoon of olive oil in a saucepan and cook in it 1/2 an onion, finely chopped, a clove of garlic, crushed and a teaspoon of dried oregano.  Season with salt and pepper.  Add 400g of passata or chopped tomatoes in juice.  Allow everything to simmer on a low heat, uncovered for about 20 - 30 minutes, stirring frequently.  It should reduce over this time and thicken.  Right at the end, throw in the shrimps.  If they're ready-cooked (pink) they'll only need a minute or two to warm through

Pasta

Heat a pan of water to boiling, add some salt and allow 2oz pasta per person.  Throw the pasta in, get the pan back to bubbling, leave off the lid and cook the pasta for the time shown on the packet (usually about 10 minutes). Drain and serve

Spinach

If you have a steamer, place the well-washed spinach in it over the cooking pasta for about 4 minutes.  If you don't have a steamer, get about a cup of water boiling in a big saucepan, quickly add the spinach (you may have to cram it in), season with a little salt pepper (and nutmeg if you like) and cook until it wilts down but is still nice and green ... about 2 minutes.  Drain and serve

Portabella Mushrooms

Trim any tough stalks, spray with a little olive oil, season with pepper and place under a hot grill for a few minutes each side

Timing..... sounds obvious but this is something a lot of cooks struggle with!!  Start the longest-cook item (sauce) first, 10 minutes later start the pasta... finally, get the spinach and the mushrooms cooking.  Aim is  to have everything ready at the same time.

If you want to learn to cook have a look at the courses on offer at your local college.  Quite often they'll do night-school courses in simple cookery skills.  Or... you can get some books out of the library and have a go that way.   Look for titles that stress 'simple', 'quick', 'family' and 'healthy'.   If you're in the UK, Ainsley Harriet's 'Meals in Minutes' is a good book.  And Delia Smith's 'Complete Cookery Course' got me started aged 18 and I've never looked back.

If you are looking for other meal ideas there are several really good recipe sites.

http://www.recipezaar.com/   ; is my favorite.

If you can get your hands on it, Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian has great, easy-to-understand instructions on knife skills and cooking techniques (even if you aren't vegetarian).  I think that's half the battle there.  Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home has a very helpful appendix (again, vegetarian, but still helpful).

I learned a lot through trial and error, but also through observation.  I watch a lot of TV shows about cooking and try to note what they're doing to duplicate it.  I have a science background, so I approach every recipe as if I'm doing an experiment--methodical and precise... but thankfully, cooking allows for a lot of flexibility.  I go to AllRecipes.com to find easy meal ideas.

I think if you get the staples down (cooking grains/starches and proteins), you can have fun experimenting with the other stuff (sauces etc.) that makes the staples tasty.  When all else fails, having a backup salad waiting in the wings will help if you botch up whatever it is you're cooking.  A good sense of humor helps too.

 Good luck, and have fun!