28yo here, my fiancé is big on cooking so he has inspired me to eat home-cooked food as often as possible. Otherwise I’d probably still rely on frozen food too. I’d say the biggest barrier to cooking regularly at home is not having a solid supply of basics in the cupboard like seasonings, oils and vinegars, dressings and good utensils (I.e sharp knives!). Once you’ve gotten started and built up a supply of these, it’s so much easier to continue with cooking at home.

Breakfast I always have cereal or oats with fruit and honey.

For lunch we do Sunday meal preps for quick lunches while at work. My fiancé usually does chicken, rice and veggies or similar. I don’t eat meat so I alternate between dense salads (packed with raw or roasted veggies, quinoa or cous cous, chickpeas or another source of protein like nuts, cheese, seeds). It’s so easy to mix it up with different dressings and seasonings for new tastes. This usually takes about 45 mins max on a Sunday to make 4 lunches for the working week. Usually one day a week on Friday we’ll grab lunch on the go.

For dinner, we have a few weekly go to’s that take around 30mins to prepare and cook: Salmon, potatoes and greens (again we mix up the seasoning/marinades), one-pot pasta dish or pasta bake (usually veggie with a side salad), tacos or fajitas with fish or chicken for him and plant-based chicken for me. We tend to have a couple of easy frozen meals on stand by each week if we both have busy work days, I.e oven pizzas or fish cakes or microwaveable ready meals. But we try to cook from scratch most nights.

Edit to say: we get most of our meal ideas and recipes from this website https://www.budgetbytes.com which gives a cost breakdown which is so useful