Compost Virgin

Thanks to my mother's influence, I have become a huge recycling advocate over the past two years. The city here has a strange way of doing trash. You buy bags with the high school name on it, fill it with your trash, and put it out every Monday morning. The city does the rest of the work. Due to recycling, I usually don't have enough trash in one week to fill half the bag, yet most of my trash is comprised of vegetable peelings, fatty meat, etc. I am thinking if I composted then I would rarely ever take out trash, saving me from buying the over-priced trash bags and from adding to the landfill roughly six miles from where I live. So, for any of you that have composted or tried, do you have any tips on how to start from scratch? I am a virgin composter and have no clue about any of it so I will need the "Idiots Guide to Composting" version. Liv and Du, I am thinking you may be experts on this. Lori, I am thinking you may not care :) Meg, I know you find this irritating and stupid and are having flashbacks to your German bug-infested compost. If you have any tips or ideas, please let me know. I would very much like to get a compost in place and start using it.