I feel you, I was in basically the same situation when I first learnt cooking. I just wanted some good, nutritious eats without burning my home, hands or wallet.
Cooking can be a way to nutrition, but it can also be a lot of fun experimenting and getting to know your own preferences.
My suggestion would be to a) face that this is going to be a process, there’s both knowledge skill, time and planning to be sunk into this before you get good, b) get a basic level cookbook, c) simplify.
First of all, you won’t gain several years of cooking experience without putting in the work. We’re working baby steps, but we can do them in a way that’s fun for adults.
You can almost certainly learn one recipe and one variant per week. This is usually much more fun as you get to pick and plan for the thing, and have a second go at something you’d like to.
Recipe books come in different qualities, and with different readers in mind. Have a browse through second-hand books, stores, online reviews and find a sensible home style cooking book. Make sure you can follow the recipes and that align with what you’d like to learn. We had a whole no-nonsense home cooking movement in the 70s here with recipes that are pragmatic, easy to adapt and hilariously different to current recipe culture (50 word recipe, vs 4000 words about the author’s mother).
The reason to pick a book is to keep to one author and not switch between different cooking styles or writing styles, and have a way to check off progress. Also you’ll learn what adaptations you prefer: more garlic? Less grains? More cowbell? Etc.
A good way to start is with something you know you like, a promising recipe and a few tries (maybe spaced over a week or so). You mentioned pancakes and French toast, maybe try a Spanish omelette, or a German (oven) pancake? Maybe eventually a fried rice?
As for variants, it’s not harder than trying it either with slightly different ingredients (mushrooms instead of bell peppers) or in a different way/recipe (maybe the recipe was stupid). This also helps you learn what are the important parts, and what can be changed, in any recipe.
Last tip is to simplify. You’re in this for the long haul. Maybe start with cooking 2 meals a week, or one per day, or whatever is only a little challenging to you. Don’t do all different recipes, start with one, and branch to a few with time. You’ll learn both how and when to vary your menu as you go along, meanwhile it’s easier to progress (as well as cheaper and more nutritious) to keep to fewer but good recipes in a rotation.
For me, I keep to about 5 dishes per week, with two prepped big batch recipes for most of it, and a “novel” dish/day from a pool of recipes. Easy to shop for, easy to vary, and very little day-to-day planning.
As for cookware it depends on style of cooking. I’m European and we enjoy cooking from raw ingredients, so I mostly use two knives (one sharp good quality chefs knife, and a smaller knife), a good cutting board (wood!), a skillet (IKEA carbon steel is lovely), a spatula, pots (2 and 5 l, with lids), a whisk/hand mixer, an oven safe tray, some measures, a spoon for tasting.
There’s some other nice to haves: like fruit peelers, oven mitts, kitchen towels, a tranche skillet (deep skillet), a colander, garlic press, etc.
But you’ll figure that out as you find what ingredients come often.
As you continue learning one recipe at a time, some of them will stick with you, bookmark those, and most will be one-and-done. Between them and the variants, you should be able to both learn a bunch of useful recipes to put into rotation, as well as how to vary them according to season/pantry, but most importantly what you enjoy in your food. Nothing tastes quite like home cooked, because it tastes just how you like it.
Good luck on your culinary journey!
This is actually a great write up for beginner cooks. Well written!
I’d like to emphasise a thing that I found not as clear as the rest: When planning when to start cooking things, I find that starting from the end and planning backwards is helpful.
I want it done by 18:30. Plating takes 2 minutes, food needs done 18:28 latest. Meat takes 8 minutes, so should start 18:20 latest, veg takes 6 minutes but can be done at the same time - 18:24. Etc.
This is hard when you start out, but after having fried meat and boiled veggies a few times you’ll get an idea both of how long it takes, how much you can manage at a time, and how much time is lost in the other things (getting plates, getting burnt, forgetting stuff, etc).
If you’re the type of ND that doesn’t work backwards, you either use your strategies, or perhaps group tasks in roughly equal blocks. Maybe chopping onions & garlic, browning them and then frying the meat in the same pan takes 20 minutes, which might be the same as boiling potatoes.
On the topic of kitchen cheating/checking.
You can taste things to adjust seasoning, use a spoon (like a teaspoon), dip it, blow/wait for it to cool, and taste it. Start with salt and main flavor, and as you get more experienced you can add more nuanced stuff (“this needs some orange zest” is a ways down the road).
Also: for any meats, eggs, fish, and flour dishes (and some others) you can use an oven thermometer for perfect results.
Look up and print out a temperature chart and you can have your dishes perfectly cooked every time, no dryness, gummyness or undercooking.