Figure out what you want to eat: generally, people fall into a few habitual meals, even when they're eating out all the time.

Finding a recipe: skip this. It's a waste of time. I haven't followed a recipe for anything that wasn't a cake in the last 15 years.

Getting the ingredients: you have the causality reversed. You choose the meals based on what you have, not what you will have based on what meals you want.

Figure out the recipe: see point #2, but also, recipes are extremely standardized. It's your failure to have learned the language that is the problem.