I'm the first to admit - vegan recipes can be very overwhelming. At first, I glazed over most of them because there was simply too many ingredients, it looked like it would take too long, I didn't recognize half of the ingredients listed and quite frankly, it was easier to open a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.
It didn't take long to realize an important fact: vegan recipes are long because they have to be. True vegan recipes are going to focus primarily on whole foods. Some whole foods are tasty all by their lonesome, but others need a bit of spicing up. There's only so many nights in a row you can eat steamed broccoli and plain brown rice. Eventually you're going to need to spice it up a bit.
That's why vegan recipes are so long.
For me, it helps to break the recipe down into substantial ingredients and spices. Chances are, you're going to have three, four, five or even more spices in any given recipe. By separating these ingredients from the rest, it's easier to tell how many ingredients are really in the recipe.
Which brings us to the other issue - I didn't know what half of the ingredients were! Things like nutritional yeast, Bragg's Liquid Aminos, turmeric and agave nectar were completely foreign to me. I wandered through the health food stores looking for the unknown items on my shopping list.
Eventually I got it down, although there is still an occasional foreign ingredient that will show up in a recipe. In general, though, I finally have my pantry stocked with the essentials for vegan cooking. The point is, take it slow and add ingredients as they come up in recipes. See my page titled What is That and Where Do I Get It? for a condensed list of some of the typical vegan ingredients. If you have questions or find an unknown ingredient, just ask! :~)
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