Deliciously Ella tells us she wants to make veg cool again. Plus, recipes from her new book
The food star tells us what she’s been cooking up during lockdown
Back when being vegan was something only your weird hippy mate dabbled in, Ella Mills started what would become a huge healthy eating empire.
She had turned to a plant-based diet to help manage the symptoms of a condition that affected her nervous system, blogging her journey along the way. Fastforward eight years and it’s unlikely that you’ve never tried one of her recipes or grabbed one of her protein balls on your commute.
We spoke to Ella, 29, about the changes in the wellness industry and how it’s now accessible for all – as proven by her new book Deliciously Ella Quick & Easy: Plant-based Deliciousness (Yellow Kite, £25, out 9 July).
Your new book is more than just a cookbook, it’s a complete healthy lifestyle guide… Yes, I’ve learned so much since I started Deliciously Ella. I came at the whole wellbeing thing from an interest in food, but the more I’ve learned, the more I’ve come to appreciate that you can’t separate it. It’s very easy to focus on our plate – and there’s nothing wrong with that – but it’s important to see everything within the context of it. For example, the way we sleep, our stress levels, have a fundamental impact on our wellbeing, too. It’s no good just eating more broccoli. How has the wellness landscape changed since you started out? When I first told people I was going to eat a vegan diet, they looked at me like I’d said I had an alien coming for supper. I’d never met anyone who was a vegan and there was quite a lot of weird stigma around it. That’s really changed, and it’s exciting to see for environmental and ethical reasons. The aim has never been to persuade everyone to be vegan – I’m a big fan of trying to give people realistic solutions as much as possible. We all know that we need to do a bit more for the sake of our health. I mean, only one in four of us manage to get our five a day. But it’s really exciting to see how easy it’s becoming. If food isn’t easy to cook and it’s not delicious, then eating enough veg isn’t going to be achievable in the long term. If you’re new to it, it can all feel a bit intimidating... The weird and wacky stuff is interesting to read about, so that’s often what we see. But it can also be off-putting, so I do get it. Just find what works for you. When we think about getting healthy, we immediately think, “Lettuce!” Don’t think about it like that, think about what you enjoy – guacamole is a vegetable. It doesn’t have to be boring. You’ve said you want to make vegetables cool… We’ve seen vegetables as a side dish for so long, but there’s actually so much we can do with simple ingredients that are really quick and easy. Chickpeas are really cheap and easy to get hold of, so nail a recipe for a chickpea curry. It doesn’t have to be too complicated. Did you make banana bread during lockdown? No, but I have jumped on the sourdough bandwagon. My husband Matt thought I’d lost the plot the other week – as our kitchen is in the basement and it gets quite cold, I wanted the dough to be warm overnight, so I sheepishly brought it up to bed with me! n