My mom, who was a self admitted not-good cook would start these on the stove a bit before dad was set to come home. He’d be hungry but smelled too good and he would finish cooking for us

There's a common joke about that. It goes something like: "A [Ukrainian] starts frying onion and garlic in a pan and only then starts thinking about what they want to make."

[Ukrainian] can be substituted for most other countries, to be honest.

But, to be real, garlic shouldn't be fried for that long IMO, so I'd only put in the garlic about 30s before I was ready to start adding all the other ingredients. But, with the onions, I've actually started onions more than 30 minutes before figuring out what else I wanted to make. That way they have a chance to get good and caramelized. That doesn't work for every recipe, but it works for a lot of them.