Mom's going to be out of town for three weeks, so I'm on my own. I ought to keep it simple, but I also wouldnt mind treating myself. If you were in my place, what would you cook?
Since she is done for the weeks and you probably don't want to cook all the time, you might also want to look into meals that freeze well. Then you can cook more at one time and just eat the leftovers on other days.
Just follow (good) recipes. Use recipes from a recipe aggregator (I use Chefkoch because German) that has multiple recipes of the same dish that users can rate to determine which recipes are "good".
Most of them have a "preparation time" scale, just use the ones with an acceptable one for you.
When you don't know cooking well yet, you should start doing this so you learn the techniques and things to look out for.
I'd cook a big tray of eggplant lasagna and freeze most of it, so I have food for multiple days. Once you know a recipe well, it's generally a big cooking time saver to make a lot of it and then freeze.
Curry. I love curry. Check out this youtube clip for a recipe from Jaime Oliver, which is delicious but also keeps it very simple: Corner Shop Curry
(He says to grate the onion, but I find that just chopping it is fine. And I use powdered ginger because I never seem to have the fresh stuff on hand.)