<p>What are best resources/tutorials for starting up with SQLAlchemy?
Maybe some simple step by step stuff like creating a simple table and using it and going up from there.</p>

Personally, I'd buy
this book
and cram it into the noggin over the course of a week or so.
I've tried tackling SQLAlchemy on the job without learning the details first. I had a hard time with it, because I found the online documentation to be sparse and cryptic ("
read the source for more info...
"). SA also provides several levels of abstraction at which you can work and I wasn't confident that I was ever working at the correct level.