The height of unambitious “cooking:” dump mixed frozen veggies in a bowl. Nuke until almost hot. Toss in browned hamburger, chopped chicken or some other protein. Add some seasoning of some sort. Nuke until hot. Scarf.
Almost semi-healthy.
You sure you’re a Southerner? They use everything but the oink around here. It’s not good to be wasteful.
I dunno why, but mr. romans has decided he wants to try Skyline Chili. It’s sold frozen here so I bought him some - there’s a choice between just the plain chili and chili with the spaghetti already in it. He’s getting the latter with some shredded cheese and diced onions added. I got the plain chili for myself. I’m on Team Bean when it comes to chili so I’ll add some of those and probably a little cheese too.
That’ll be dinner tomorrow. Low bar = achieved!
It helps if you think of Skyline as Spiced Meat Sauce as opposed to Chili. That way it won’t be such a shock to your taste buds. Love the stuff, but chili it ain’t.
My bane is meringue. I can separate the eggs into whites and yolks pretty well except when I don’t and then make a cake. I’ve made pretty good mayonnaise yet usually way too much to eat without preservatives.
Yet when making meringue for Macarons, you think everything has gone right and can just taste the cookies, the meringue goes sideways and pear-shaped all at once. Scrape it up and it’s surely sweet yet I’d have been better off using clotted cream and calling them Cotswold Cookies.
When we bake potatoes for something, we always bake a few extra. So easy to nuke. I like them with butter and any type of cheese. My go to lately is cream cheese.
Also, we do like Home Chef. They sell them in our grocery store. Much better than frozen, and really pretty good. Ya just nuke 'em.
I’ll sometimes buy some Top Raman (or whatever) beef recipe. Fine on it’s own, but also buy some roast beef from the deli. Slice that up and put it in the soup. It’s one of my favorites.
I don’t like fresh green beans, but I could eat canned green beans out of a can with a fork. Something about the metallic taste appeals to me.
On weekends I usually make a big soup or casserole or something (more ambitious that this thread is asking for). But then we eat it all week long. My wife and I don’t mind eating the same thing for a few nights, not at all.
When the Navy had me in Idaho Falls, I rented a house with two other guys. When we returned from work, we’d cook a few cups of Minute Rice and top it with a tall can of Campbell’s Chunky soup, and that was dinner. Then we’d retire to our rooms and grab six hours of sleep and go to work again.
My most unambitious is a flour tortilla + one (unwrapped) string cheese.
Nuke for about 20 seconds or so, roll it up, and you got yourself a snack.
Open a can of beans, pour them into a bowl, and nuke them until their warmed up. Take a tortilla, top with the beans, some guac (store bought, or homemade, whatever. I suppose if you make the guac yourself it makes the recipe very slightly more ambitious, but guacamole is really easy to make anyway) and some salsa from a jar. Quick veggie tacos. Or burritos, if that’s the size tortilla you have on hand.
I was thinking about the actual OP (quoted above) and felt I should make a mild correction. Especially if you’re willing to spend a bit of money, you can absolutely make amazing dishes with little actual work. Tonight, I’ll be treating myself to some very nice tonkatsu broth udon soup, but the meal will be the height of minimal effort.
Broth:
Creamy tonkatsu style concentrate, not the best out there, but it’ll work. Jist add water and heat.
Noodles:
Trader Joe’s Wheat Noodles (Udon style)
Take out of plastic, heat in hot water, add to soup.
I have some leftover roasted pork that I’ll slice thin and add, along with minced garlic (Trader Joe’s from a jar), freeze dried scallions, a dash of sesame oil, and (slightly more ambitious but still stupid easy) a softboiled egg.
Other than the egg, nothing more than suggested by the OP in terms of work (take out of package and heat), and a soft boiled egg is pretty easy. But, granted, having all the right ingredients takes time, money and planning. So that’s reasonably ambitious.
But far from when I make my broths or noodles themselves!
If you crack the egg directly into the soup as you’re heating it up (assuming you boil it for a couple of minutes?) you can poach the egg directly in the broth, which is even easier than boiling an egg separately.
In terms of the thread, unambitious would be doing it in the broth. But if I want a perfect Soft boiled egg, it’s easier to do on it’s own to juuuuuust shy of doneness and chill in a cold/ice water bath and add back at the last moment to the piping hot broth.
Not sure which I’ll do tonight. 
One can Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup. One envelope Lipton Onion Soup Mix. One chuck roast.
Mix soup and soup mix together, put in crock pot, add chuck roast and get it coated with the soup mix. Cook on low for 8 hours. Delicious pot roast and gravy. Serve with microwaved baked potato.
I used to have the “Campbell Soup Cookbook”. All sorts of recipes based on canned Campbell’s soup(s). The pot roast recipe isn’t from there, but a lot of similarly unambitious recipes.
Golden Mushroom condensed soup would work equally well here, IMO.
A guy I knew used to love to take his bird dog pheasant hunting, but he didn’t like to eat what he shot. Several times a year he’d give me a few pheasants ready for the oven.
I’d wrap each bird in thick cut bacon, then pour cream of mushroom soup over them. Cover and bake. They were delicious!