Write a first recipe with opscode chef

Boyd Hemphill will walk you through

Signing up for Hosted Chef

Setting up authentication to the Hosted Chef server

Creating a new cookbook and understanding the basic function of each part

Creating a recipe for creating a ssh user from a data bag

Enhancing the recipe to customize the .profile of that user

Enhancing the recipe to install the public ssh key for the user

Enhancing the cookbook to add a template file

Set default attributes and emerge them in the template

Overide the attributes in node data.

Each step along the way will provide an opportunity to run the chef client, look at the chef server via the web gui and understand the node data.