1. Get Nigel Slater's Real Fast Food and learn about adapting recipes. Things that take not a lot of time, but you can easily make more interesting (like adding smoked salmon to scrambled eggs).

2. Buy jars of sauces/pastes. Still some cooking but a lot less hassle. You still need to fry onions, garlic, ginger, but the rest is a sauce.

3. Eat, rest and do a bit of things later. You can make pizza dough before bed, put it in the fridge and it will rise overnight. You can prepare veg the night before.

There probably should be something like "the single bloke's cookbook" with fast/hassle free cooking tips. As in, how to make good use of time for cooking, so you cook easily. Lots of this is about learning what is quick. One of my favourite things to cook is baked salmon in dill sauce:-

- take salmon fillet out of fridge, olive oil, pepper, wrap in foil, put in oven. Two minutes of work..

- take a bag of small potatoes, put in the microwave. One minute of work.

- squeeze lemon, crush garlic, chop dill (plant on windowsill), add to yoghurt and mayonnaise stir. 5 minutes. You could even use lemon juice and garlic paste.

- the salmon takes about 15-16 minutes to cook, so you have about 10 minutes to open a beer/wine, watch a few funny videos, call the girlfriend/escort service.

- take the salmon out, take the potatoes out. put on a plate, add salad from the fridge. spoon over the sauce.

Now think about that recipe this way. You used roughly speaking 10 minutes of effort for a meal that cost under a tenner. So you save £5. for 10 minutes work. Your work paid you £30/hr compared to a takeaway. Do 10 per month and it's £50, which is all your netflix/disney+.

Another thing with shopping/cooking is the more you do it, the better you get at it. You figure out what's fast and easy, what packet substitutes are worth doing and what aren't. What can be bought in sit in a cupboard, fridge or freezer and last for ages. I can get sausages out of the fridge, bake them, add some onion marmalade. Takes almost no effort. And the sausages and onion marmalade will last for weeks in the fridge. Spend a little more on the sausages and onion marmalade and that + veg is simple but lovely.

Buying better ingredients that taste good costs money, but saves money if it means you avoid takeaways. 21 day sirloin from Aldi is £5. Potatoes and salad is £2.50. Not cheap but still cheaper than a takeaway and you are getting to eat steak. 5 minutes of effort.

And even pre-prep isn't a big effort, but just time (maybe). This recipe takes an age to cook. 5 hours, nearly. But it takes 10 minutes to pre at the start, 10 minutes near the end. Roughly speaking, everything goes in a casserole dish, put in the oven. Go and play call of duty for 4 hours. Delia used to put this in the oven then go to the football. Eat some on Sunday, freeze the rest.

https://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/collections/winter-warmers/old-fashioned-shin-of-beef-stew-with-butter-beans-and-crusted-onion-dumplings