How much time you can afford to or want to spend in the kitchen determines,  what you can cook. Some meals can be prepared quickly and easily, some meals require a lot of labour. Think about time as an ingredient in itself. What kind of meal you have largely depends on it.

 before you buy your ingredients or even look at a recipe perhaps assess, how much time do I have or would ideally like to spend in the kitchen. So for example we have  1 hour to prepare , cook and serve a meal and perhaps do the dishes. So you would not have time to prepare a Sunday roast from scratch , eat it and clean up , so realistically you are looking at preparing and cooking a meal in a maximum time of 20-25 , fifteen mins to eat - and ten minutes to clean up. One of the reasons people lose confidence to cook from scratch is perhaps they attempt a recipe which they do not have the time to do, the preparation becomes a chore, and attempting something that cant be done creates pressure and ultimately becomes less enjoyable, if at all. In the end your left a sweaty mess , with a kitchen in carnage, a substandard meal and the desire to do it again possibly gone. A little thought about managing your time most definitely makes the experience, that less daunting and potentially fraught , more enjoyable to do and a better end product.