chapotraphouse

I cant cook for myself (besides pasta) because autism and never being taught

ASD here (+ ADHD) and was also never taught. Yet I still ended up cooking a lot, partly out of necessity of being too poor to go to restaurants. Most of it was piecemeal: I'd think of something I liked, look up a few recipes, and make it. Usually I don't want the recipe to tell me what to do so I read 2 or 3 of them and do something in-between. I made a vegetarian meatloaf recently without obeying a recipe; I'd never made even a regular meatloaf before.

Food components are very predictable. You boil them, they swell with water. You fry them, they get brown on the outside. With a cutting board, water source, and heat source, you can assemble just about anything you want, and directly shape your own nutritional world with just your labor.

There's no shame in making wraps and soups and stuff all the time, it's the easiest way to start. Shepherd's pie, as you've mentioned, is a great starting point too.