drafting off this, try a few curries and when you find ones you like, stock up on the associated curry pastes. if you like thai curries, get some cans of coconut milk. you want unsweetened. uncooked rice, unopened curry paste, and canned coconut milk are all shelf stable.

my current S-tier favorites

• japanese curry
• (thai) red curry, yellow curry, massaman curry

all of these curries are solid with potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, etc, which keep fairly well in the kitchen at room temp and are cheap. after that, you just find your protein and you can have all the stuff necessary to put together a badass curry fast and easy. the recipe is usually some version of cut up your veggies into bite size chunks, put some oil+paste and your protein in a heating thing (stew pot, etc), get the paste all over, add the rest of the chunks and water or coconut milk, then slow cook or fast pressure cook everything until its done. dump over or serve with rice.

you can easily spend many lifetimes learning curries, it is a deep and wide river of knowledge that you can find flavorful dishes meeting any and every dietary restriction. my understanding is that curry basically just means "sauce", so it's like a recipe book for all the sauces.