Buy something titled like "recipes for the starving student", I'm quite sure your local bookstore has something like it, these books usually have sets of easy and cheap recipes which are often very good (but not chef level).
Cooking (unless you want to reach chef level) is rather not complicated, it's the simple matter of knowing how ingredients taste raw and cooked, and anticipating how they taste when combined with each other.
To acquire this knowledge, star with basic recipes with few ingredients and simple combinations, pasta, simple meats (try recipes where you have to sauteed so you don have to buy expansive prime cuts). Consider buying a good skillet/frying pan, a pot, a chef's knife and a basic set of spices and herbs (basil, thyme, oregano, cinnamon, coriander, curry spices, pepper, chili... ), you can see it as a useless investment but your taste buds will thank you, and you don't usually uses them fast enough to make a real dent on your budget. Learn how they individually taste and they impact on global taste.
You should also learn how food cooks, you see how you can order you meat rare, medium or well done in restaurants, well vegetables, mushrooms and all food behave like that, they have optimal cooking stages and produces different results, for example,onions are somewhat aggressive to the palate raw, yet after browning them for some time, they become brown (of course) and very sweet which is the basic requirement for an onion soup. Let's also talk about bacon and adding them to pasta, when would you add them, whether you separately cook them for a little while on a skillet so that the fat melt and the bacon brown or you put them into boiling water gives a very different result, I much prefer the former. So when making basic recipes, introduce minute variations and see the result (when you are alone or with someone who doesn't mind you experimenting).
After some time (a little over 3 months maybe), you should get consistent results and
improvising will probably result in success most of the time. If you are staying with your parents for some time over the summer holiday, when they they prepare a meal, ask to participate, ask questions like why are you doing this in this order? why are you cutting this this way? how do you know it's hot enough? and so on. If anything bonding with your parents before going away will make good memories for your parents and you.
These days, even of the most interesting ingredient in my fridge is eggplant, I can make a good meal out of it, nothing special mind you, but with some olive oil, some thyme, basil and a frying pan, eggplant and bread is way more delicious than it has any right to be
It also improves quite a bit with some goat cheese
Last thing, onions, garlic, tomatoes, sour cream, eggs are basically ingredients you can use anywhere, they are always handy in your kitchen, and you can get them cheap.
Final thing
, once you get used to ingredients and cooking, the best thing is that you can start following complex recipes and get the expected result in the end, that *will* impress you girlfriend or boyfriend when you decide cooking a somewhat elaborate meal for them.
