Good food takes time to prepare. Most folks have suggested batch cooking, and that's as short as it gets without hiring someone to cook for you. My wife and I trade off cooking each night, and between cooking fresh and eating leftovers, we probably make 4-6 dinners a week. Each dinner typically takes between 1.5h and 2.5h to cook. And we have two young children. To be frank, it's a very American frame of mind that cooking should only take a half hour or some other super short span of time; in most of the rest of the world, folks acknowledge the time things like cooking (and eating!) take rather than attempting to overoptimize them. Try it; you'll live longer.
Honestly, the time of your life when you are "too busy" to cook is when you are young and single and have never cooked. I've been there. Oh, the memories of my 20s and early 30's. FT jobs, plus grad school (2 classes a semester), plus gym, plus volleyball. I mean, really, there wasn't time for cooking (or vacuuming). And besides, I tended to cut or burn myself. Plus, I never learned to cook from my mom.
I see all of the same trend with friends who are single. It's best to get over that before you have kids (if you have kids). For me, I learned to cook because I got fat on my husband's cooking.
That said, it doesn't have to be hard. If you even do it once or twice, that's a bonus. Now I'm older, we have a toddler and an elementary school child (who is in music and baseball), and 2 FT jobs. We batch cook AND keep it simple.
Lunch is sandwiches and salads
Dinners:
grilled salmon - 10 min
baked chicken fingers (that can go into the oven straight from the freezer) - 30 min
rice (60 min in the rice cooker)
curry chicken (chicken, coconut milk, curry paste, spices) - 30 min
roasted veggies (30 min)
bean burritos
quesadillas (15 min)
soup and stew
one-pot pasta (35 min)
None of these even take very long. If I make refried beans in the crockpot, that's the long leg. But then I have a few days' worth.
Right after I went back to work after kid #2, we were on a schedule.
Saturday: make a pasta dish, enough for 3 meals
Sunday: make a stew or a rice dish, enough for 3 meals
Weds (when you've run out, or almost): crockpot day
We eat food that has already been prepped, somewhat. About 2/3 of our veggies are local, and require preparing. The rest:
- frozen green beans
- frozen mixed veg (cauli, broccoli, carrots)
- frozen edamame
- frozen blueberries for smoothies
- frozen peas and carrots
And we also eat processed foods too, occasionally:
- Frozen Costco pizza
- Marinated salmon portions
- breaded fish sticks
- breaded chicken tenders
- curry sauces from trader joe's
- soyaki sauce from trader joe's