Filling out the roster (or meal)

Find me a star athlete and I will show you an exceptional sidekick.
Nearly all athletes that have led their teams to championships have had an excellent supporting cast around them. Michael Jordan had Scottie Pippen. Larry Bird had Parish, McHale, Havlicek and a lot of others. The Yankees had Jeter, Clemens, Rivera and a slew of talented people. Joe Montana had Jerry Rice. Terry Bradshaw had Franco Harris, Lynn Swann and John Stalworth.
And that is just off the top of my head.
The point is this: no team has ever been great simply because of one player. Championship level teams usually need a great player, but also a great supporting cast.
The same thing goes for cooking.
While it might be a stretch to call my cooking championship-level after three weeks of cooking on my own, I have at least begun to lay the groundwork for a championship-caliber lineup (i.e. good side dishes that I can cook in addition to a couple of solid entrees.)
What I failed to realize when starting out is that simply making a hamburger or pasta was not quite enough food. There needs to be more to it than just my world-famous (okay, maybe just Athens famous, or perhaps just my apartment-famous) pasta dish or my delicious burgers. I need to add a supporting cast to my great player. I needed to find some solid side dishes.
When my mom was preparing me for college, she was focused on helping me learn to cook healthy entrees. The idea of side dishes was not discussed much, but I have begun to find what dishes work well with what types of foods. Here are some suggestions for easy side dishes to go with your meal.
1.) Baked Beans
Conventional logic would say that you can simply pour the beans into a pot, stir them up and serve them. But I've found that most canned beans (and by most I'm basically referring to Bush's Baked Beans) can taste a lot better by putting in a little extra effort.
(This is for a 28-ounce can of Bush's Baked Beans.)
To start, drizzle some olive oil (an ingredient you should have in your kitchen based on my previous post) into a pot and put the pot on medium. Then, cut up about 1/3 of a cup of onions. Dice the onions into fine pieces, the smaller the better.
Next, put the onions into the pot and let them cook a little while. They should cook for about 4 minutes, but they should not brown. If they are browning, turn down the heat and add the beans.
Once the onions have cooked (and they will begin to liquify), pour in your can of baked beans and stir the ingredients together.
Once you have poured the baked beans, immediately put in 1/3 of a cup of ketchup. This is the part that is most important. The ketchup adds a nice flavor and adds a bit of a thicker consistency, which I prefer in my beans.
Cook until you see the beans starting to bubble and/or smoke a little bit. (That might not be the technical term, but that was my queue for turning it off last night, and they tasted delicious.)
Finally, and enjoy. (And when you serve, don't worry about a serving dish. Remember, you're in college. Just put a hot pad or a pot-holder on the table, pot on the hot pad, and you have yourself a serving dish.)
Now if that seems a bit elementary and you are feeling more adventurous, try this recipe for a bit more advanced approach to baked beans. I plan on trying it sometime soon, and will make sure to pass along my thoughts.
2.) Baked Potatoes
 There are less work when making potatoes, but they are an excellent side dish because they are filling, so they are ideal to accompany a lighter main course. Potatoes can be cooked in many different ways, but here is how I typically make them.
First, you boil some water. While the water is boiling, wash the potatoes (any amount will work). I don't peel the potatoes (the less work the better!), but you can peel the potatoes if you want. Then, when the water is boiling, add in the potatoes. The potatoes should take no more than about 8-10 minutes, but you can keep checking them as they boil. To check if the potatoes are done, simply stick a fork in the potato. If the potato slides off the fork, the potatoes are done. If the potato sticks to the fork, they still need to boil, and if the potato breaks apart, then you should have taken them out a minute or two earlier.
Once the potatoes have boiled, dump them into a strainer and let them sit for a little. (At this point, you could eat them if you wanted, but I like to add a little bit more to them.)
As they sit, get out some ham and some onions. (Slices of ham are preferred, but lunch meat ham would probably work.) Slice up the ham and onions into little chunks.
Then, cut them up into chunks, about bite sized. Then, put a pan on the stove on medium with either some olive oil or butter in the pan. When the pan has heated up, add the potatoes, ham and onions. Cook them up until you see that they are ready, adding some salt and pepper too. (All those items are fine to eat pre-cooking, so serve when you think they are ready.)
For the finishing touch, put the food into a tupper-ware container. Add 1 to 3 tablespoons of light miracle whip into the tupperware (depending on how many potatoes you used), shake it all up, and serve.
This was a variation on a dish my mom made growing up, but for my culinary capabilities, it tasted pretty darn good.
For more potato recipes, who better to turn to then Betty Crocker? Once again, those are a bit more complicated.
Other side dishes I'm sure are good, but those are a few of my favorites. (And basically the only ones I know how to make.)