Hey, I'm Gen Z. Not everyone here is older. I do cook. Quite well. I can be a bit lazy tho and I'm poor. So it's simple cheap stuff usually. I like to get chicken or pork, put some chinese chilli sauce on it, and bake it until its crispy. Then maybe some sweet and sour on top. Another good simple sauce is soy sauce mixed with peanut butter and heated and stirred a bit. Rice with some yellow curry powder, msg, and dried onion/carrots while its cooking, then adding the juices from whatever meat you cooked at the end is pretty good. Red Thai Curry powder is also great and can go on almost anything. A lot of my diet is just whatever meat cuts are dirt cheap (usually chicken quarters or pork half loin), rice, potatoes, beans, and other dirt cheap stuff.
Edit: Also, for the time aspect. It's good to find meals that you can just let cook and don't need to be watched. Like I can throw chicken thighs in the oven with a potato, leave it at 375F for 1.5 hours then come back and they're both done and ready to eat. Not need to check on it. I can do other things in the mean time. Like chores. Altho, that specific one only works if you enjoy your chicken cooked to shit which I personally do. I like it cooked so much it falls off the bone.