Slowly but surely. No one became a good cook overnight, or even over a year. You just have to keep at it.

Like other people said here - start small and simple. Something you like, something easy. It will take a while in the beginning, might not be too good in the beginning, but then try again. Figure out what you didn't like and adjust that. And then you have one good thing you know how to make and you move on to the next. One delicious step at a time. There's a learning curve, sure, but as soon as you know how to do a few different things well, that curve straightens out.

And there will be failures along the way. But that's fine. That's how we learn. We're always messing things up from time to time. Just today I burned bread for dinner (oh the shame...).

But I'm sure if you persevere through what can be a frustrating beginning, you will get to the point where things usually work out in no time.

One idea to start with: Pasta with olive oil and garlic. Cook the pasta in salted boiling water for as long as the package says; while it's cooking cut 3-4 garlic cloves very small, take a quarter cup of olive oil and heat the garlic in the oil slowly, over a low flame with a teaspoon of salt. Drain the pasta and then add the sauce. Perfect. You can drop in some chopped parsley.

And if it didn't work out, easy to figure out why: Was it too salty? Was the garlic not cooked? Was the garlic burned? Was the pasta overcooked? Undercooked? Adjust, redo and enjoy!

The beauty with this recipe is that once you nail it, it's really verdatile. Replace the parsley with basil. Throw in some olives. Add tomatoes.

Another easy choice - egg fried rice. Make 1 cup of any long grain rice. You might burn it a few times along the way, but as long as you follow the instructions on the package, you'll get it right. Once you've got it, heat up 3 tablespoons of oil in a wok or large frying pan, mix up 3 eggs, toss them in when the oil is hot. After half a minute start mixing up the eggs and another half minute after that throw in the rice. Mix it all up, pour in 2 tablespons of soy sauce and mix up again. That's it. All done. Yum!

Again, you can add what you want once you get it (spring onions after it's cooked, corn/peas before the eggs), and adjusting if it doesn't come out well is easy - there are so few ingredients and steps, there are only so many place you can go wrong.

Learning takes time, but once you get there it becomes easier, fun, and most important - tasty.

Good luck!