I've been buying fresh ingredients for two years to make the recipes in my Clean Simple Eats recipe book. The shopping would sometimes take an hour, and preparing the food would take about 30 minutes a meal.
They started a prepared meal service for $12 a meal, which was really pushing my limits on what I'd be willing to spend to avoid having to do all of that work and spend all of that time. Then I found the "double portion +$2" button. The food tastes similar to how I made it. But now instead of spending 30 minutes a meal, I spend 90 seconds and spend almost the same amount of $$. I don't have random scraps to fashion into meals for my kids anymore (they won't eat the diet food I make), but for now this seems like the best choice.
I've found recipe books to be the antithesis to meal planning and time/money optimization. To me, "meal planning" is having staples at home--not sitting down on Sunday to write out 7-days worth of meals, going to multiple grocery stores to source all of the ingredients, then prepping for the week. You already know which store, the specific isle to find them, and roughly what it costs.
When cooking from a recipe the whole point is that there's a bespoke ingredient or technique. Sadly, I don't think there's a lot of resources on optimizing your kitchen out there. I think because it's not clearly defined and staple foods are very cultural and personal.
I do think people underestimate the upfront cost of getting the knowledge and skills to run a home kitchen. Once you do it, it's amazingly cheap compared to ordering out and the food is already there. The closest I see is reverence for grandmothers to whip something up or always have things on hand. You can vary the time/costs with your tastes; yogurt, muesli, and whatever fruit is handy or pour cereal and milk. That sounds like way less of a headache to me than going out or having something delivered.
Different things work for different people at different points in their life. I'm glad when people find systems that work for them--it sounds like you have. I just advocate for a low-maintenance system for cooking at home.
