So I happend to hover over a 'cooking pot' and activated it. I was given the tutorial window telling me how I could make food! Most of the choices have very small benefit, but others had relatively decent effects. I've been playing a ton of hours, and I just now discovered this, haha!

Anyone get any good use out of "cooking" food?

You can make some things that are useful with cooking, but not too many.

i make pies to throw at people

You can exploit Stamina based actions with I believe it's Vegetable Stew, it gives you lots of Stamina Regeneration.

And you only need 1 Stamina to do any Stamina required action, like Shield Bash.

Venison Stew also gives you 1 / second stamina regen for 300 seconds (just like Vegetable) and also restores 15 health. Quite good at low levels.

Food's can be very helpful at times specially for mages with low stamina http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Cooking

Best bet are stews and soups- meat stews and vegetable soup give quite an edge to an archer or melee character for power attacks. Other stuff can help at low levels when you don't have a lot of potions.