any dish that makes huge batches and stores well is a good depression meal for me. vegan chili is really good and all you have to do is chop up some veggies and dump that in a crockpot (i usually add celery, bell pepper, and shredded zucchini and cook some garlic and yellow onion!) with three cans of beans (i usually use black, red kidney, and garbanzo beans), a couple cans of crushed tomatoes, a can of tomato paste, and seasonings. leave it on low for eight hours and serve it with some rice!
there are some good cajun recipes that are a bit more involved, but they make huge portions and don't really cost too much. serious eats has some great recipes on this front. here's one for gumbo, and another one for jambalaya.
In the winter buy bunches of root vegetables. Such as carrots, celery root, parsnips etc; as well as onion, potato, zucchini, butternut squash, etc.
Coarsely chop, toss in a large bowl with olive oil, and throw in some pans into the oven. Add some herbs and/or spices if you fancy. Just salt and pepper is delicious too.
Can have that all week long, over rice, pasta or salad; or with beans.
Simple, excellent nutritious meals.
Chop potatoes (I like a mixture of sweet and red) into wedges or chunky chips, chop loads of whatever veg is around, maybe throw in some (fakey) bacon bits or similar, oil, seasoning from complex to just a bit of salt and lots of pepper, bake in oven for 20-30mins on a medium high heat.
Basically healthy delicious fast food, dead easy, great for a hangover.
Not a nutritionist here either but sugar, especially the amount of processed sugars in everything capital markets us, is pretty fucking evil. I successfully quit smoking cold turkey from a pack a day, but have tried multiple times to drastically reduce my sugar intake and failed again and again.
I only use enough oil to make the seasoning stick and stop the veg sticking to the pan anyway, but yeah they don't seem so bad.
One of my favorite bullshit meals is a bunch of white rice mixed with ground beef and peas and then covered in soy sauce.
Also Japanese style curry is stupid easy to make: chop up and fry several onions, hack up a few carrots and potatoes, boil it all for 45 minutes or so, add a curry cube and a bit of ketchup, worcestershire sauce, and apricot preserves, and eat with rice. Add meat if you want.
Shakshuka is also great. Slice some mushrooms and a jalapeno (both optional imo) and dice an onion and some bell peppers (I use half a red and half a green), fry in a little oil and/or butter for 10-15 minutes, add paprika, tumeric, cayenne pepper, black pepper, and cumin, fry for another 5 minutes or so, add diced tomatoes (I just use a few 12oz cans cause I'm lazy), simmer for 20 minutes, then crack as many eggs over top as you can fit in the pan. Let those cook for a few minutes and then top with feta and cilantro and eat with some nice crusty bread.
Soups are easy as fuck. Cut up a bunch of leeks, a few onions, a few potatoes, some garlic; put into a large pan with water, boil for an hour. Use an immersion blender to mix it, done.
And if you make a lot of it you can freeze it for when you're lazy and just want something homemade to eat fast.
I throw together cans of chickpeas, kidney beans, and corn, along with some diced peppers and onions and a cheapo taco seasoning pack, into a nice burrito meal that usually lasts 2-3 days
