One I like is Help, My Apartment Has a Kitchen!

It's exactly as you describe, a few basic ingredients and a lot of good recipies. It is also full of good advice and "mom tips" that help you learn how to cook.

Hope this helps...

--Ecg

A good cookbook for this _How to Cook without a Book_. All real food, all realistic to prepare without hours and hours of time, and it's focused on technique rather than a particular dish, with a lot of variations.

A good emergency/instructional cookbook for vegetarians is Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian. It is huge, and it is organized by main vegetable, so you can look in your refrigerator, notice that the celery are getting a little wilty and need to be used, and look up the celery section for a choice of celery recipes from around the world. It leans heavily on India, of course, but there are recipies from everywhere. Tends towards the hearty and spicy, but there's some simple and delicate too.

As the message title says, I like cooking, so some of this may not be terribly appropriate, but it might.

Basics -- learn how to do a tomato sauce.

Chop onions and fry gently (with garlic if you like)
Splash of wine (optional)
Add tin of tomatoes, chopped (or buy the chopped sort!)
Add herbs (oregano is best -- the dried stuff works unlike most other herbs)

You now have a base. This can be added to pasta. Fry some minced beef and add to the base. Bolognaise

Or bacon
or other veg (peppers, mushrooms)

The veggie ones take less time to cook than the pasta does. I've served the bacon one (probably had some olives in as well) to friends and got loads of compliments.

and don't worry about guests

Unless it's a 'dinner party' (which is very silly/stressful if you don't like cooking) they're there to be with you. The food is an incedental. Keep it simple and tasty. And make sure the wine's good!

Hope that helps a bit

Steve

For SteveC et al:

Adding a little fresh basil will also go well, and some garlic powder!

And if you're veggie, most veggie bacon is gawd-awful but cooks very well in a pan for meals such as this ;)

I grow my own garlic and have three or four different sorts of basil in the greenhouse. :)

However, assuming appleq is relying on storecupboard ingredients, dried basil is the pits!

Steve

I like the site www.savingdinner.com, you can sign up for weekly menus (Subsciptions are for 3, 6 or 12 months and inexpensive) to be sent to you (with a grocery list) and all you have to do is follow the easy instructions. The emals are super easy and very good, my husband likes them and he is full after dinner (a rare thing!).

Once I get the weekly menu, I order the gorceries online and they arrive the next day. I can usually order organic meat and produce, so the flavours are strong.

I signed up for their Mega Menu Mailer a few weeks ago ($8.95) and you get recipes for 22 meals that you make marinades for and then freeze the meals. We have been very busy getting our online store up and running, so I thought it would be perfect, and it is. I just defrost the marinating meat, cook it up, add a salad, some veggies and maybe rice and dinner is done and it tastes great.