I'm really lazy when it comes to certain things. Food prep, for example. My parents are two of the best cooks I know, and they're always cooking something up. Feeding you is how they say hello, how they relax, how they make you feel comfortable. I never had to cook much growing up, to such an extent that family lore includes me calling my dad up one day when I was home alone, hungry, asking how to boil water. So imagine how much the lazy hungry-man in me rejoiced when I visited the bodega that's literally two doors down from my new place. I live in a mostly Hispanic neighborhood and saw beans, burritos, fried plantains, all kinds of chicken and pork dishes under heat lamps, for super cheap ($3 for a decently sized burrito, $2 for a 16 oz cup of beans). Open 5am-9pm everyday. I started imagining how often I was going to come here, how the matriarch of the bodega is gonna know me by name, how I'm gonna put their kid through school with all the beans and burritos I'll buy from them. I guess I'm never learning how to cook.
The bodega is truly a double edged sword. I sincerely want to know how to cook, but I don't yet have the intrinsic excitement and motivation for cooking. Which is how I normally spend my free time: on things I'm itching to do. Someone recently put it to me in a new light--and it's kind of embarrassing how simple it is--but he said, "What's your favorite thing to eat? Cook that." And I was like. Oh. That makes sense. Cooking isn't just for making fuel in between activities. I consider this realization very promising.
Learn to cook learn to cook learn to cook! What's the simplest thing you know? I've had periods of time where I have gotten out of the habit of cooking my own meals and ended up relying on bought food (kind of like at your local bodega, although probably not as delicious). The thing that always gets me back into it is buying packets of fresh pasta and fresh pasta sauce. It'll be a bit more expensive than cooking it from scratch but it'll be done in three minutes or so. Less time than I'd need to take to put my shoes on, leave the house and buy some takeaway.