Learn Spanish (Latin America): El hombre cocina la carne, pero la mujer hace la ensalada. - The man cooks the meat, but the woman makes the salad.

Yes! Just like "but", pero connects two different or contrasting ideas in this sentence. Also, notice that we put a comma right before pero when joining two complete mini-sentences, which is very similar to English punctuation.

Both people are preparing food. Why do we use cocina for the meat but hace for the salad?

The verb cocinar means "to cook" and usually implies using heat. Because a salad is raw, we don't "cook" it. Instead, we use hace from the verb hacer, which means "to make" or "to do".

Wait, why is it la carne? Doesn't carne end in "e"?

You might remember that words ending in "-o" are usually masculine and "-a" are usually feminine. Words ending in "-e" are a mixed bag and don't have a strict rule! Carne (meat) happens to be feminine, so we use la.

What is the infinitive (dictionary form) of the verb hace?

It comes from hacer (to make or to do). Because la mujer (the woman) is "she", we use the "she" form of the verb. Since hacer is an "-er" verb, it ends in "-e" for he/she/it, giving us hace.