If you stick to some basic foundations, like potatoes, rice, oatmeal, beans....you can make very simple inexpensive meals. Add in toppings and sides of more colorful vegetables and fruits.

I have tried many complicated recipes, but I am much happier with simple combinations of these items. Stock up on your favorite condiments and toppings, like mustard, soy sauce, etc also.

I like burritos made up of =
Tortillas - boil bag rice - Fordhook Lima beans - thick salsa on top.

I too like very simple combinations.

And welcome to this group.

Just found out this group exists. I never thought of vegetarianism as a "challenge", not since I started in the sixties. But I like to cook, so maybe that's part of it.

I love my veggie soups...just toss whatever is available in the garden into a pot of boiling water, along with potato...sweet and/or white, macaroni, cooked beans, onion, seasonings, nutritional yeast. I always keep jars of cooked beans in the fridge for soups, stir fries, etc.

I never follow recipes. We should learn how to cook, not follow recipes. Experiment with various things, follow basic principles of cooking like going easy on the spices until you know what you're doing. Real cooks are improvisers. Once you learn how, you can make a nice meal out of whatever you have...within reason. My mother and her mother were great cooks, and they didn't follow recipes. My mother did when she first started cooking, but most of what she knew she got from Grandma.

It's like riding a bicycle...at first you fall down a lot, but once you've got it, you've got it for life.