Broccoli is great – but broccoli isn’t the answer to everything
PLANT-BASED COOK ELLA MILLS CHATS TO PRUDENCE WADE ABOUT JUGGLING FAMILY, WORK AND HEALTHY LIVING
OFTEN seen as a poster girl for wellness, Ella Mills – otherwise known as ‘Deliciously Ella’ – actually isn’t too keen on the term.
“I do think the conversation has become quite charged, quite loaded,” she says thoughtfully. “Even the word ‘wellness’ sometimes makes people think of weird and wacky things in LA, with shamans and cleanses. When you hear it, you don’t necessarily think of going for a walk and then making a bean chilli, which feels more within your remit.
“The wonderful and wacky make more interesting stories, which I so appreciate,” she adds, “but the reality is, I think in most people’s eyes, what we need is a meal that’s pretty easy to make and you can make a really big batch of, and then just chuck in the freezer.”
With her latest cookbook, Deliciously Ella Quick & Easy, Ella wants to help make wellness healthy eating feel less alienating. And the fact it’s built around speedy recipes is no coincidence – she and her husband and business partner, Matt, welcomed her first child, Skye, last year.
Ella admits: “This cookbook has actually been on a personal and emotional level, the hardest project I’ve ever done. I went back to work with it four weeks after Skye was born, so I was pretty all over the shop at that point.
“She came onto the shoots with us and I had her in a sling and was feeding her on set – so I was breastfeeding and food styling at the same time.”
With a baby, another on the way, and a business to run, Ella has a new appreciation for how simple wellness should – and can – be. “It’s going on a walk or doing a five-minute meditation,” says the 29-year-old. “It’s not the big, expensive, complicated, time-consuming things, it’s the simple, everyday practices that you can have in your life to help you feel happier, calmer, healthier, more energised.”
She emphasises how cheap and easy things like chickpea stews and lentil daals can be, and her efforts to make recipes that are more accessible are admirable.
Still, some might struggle to shake their preconceptions of Ella as the granddaughter of Lord Sainsbury, and the fact her first book back in 2015 was seen as a big part of the widely-criticised ‘clean eating’ movement – something she has since distanced herself from.
“The way that we eat is so linked to so many other things,” Ella explains. “We too often look at our diet and the way we eat in isolation, and actually, I’m not sure that’s helpful to any of us. The way we live and the way we eat is so reflective, and often when people think about getting healthier and making a change in the way they’re eating, they go first and foremost to their diet. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s what I did as well.
But at the same time, there’s so much more to it. Broccoli is great, but broccoli isn’t the answer to everything.”
Instead, Ella says she’s interested in wellness as a whole – how your mental health can affect your gut, the impact sleep has on your wellbeing, even analysing your relationship to people and the world around you as a whole.
“I think it’s increasingly important to look at all of it in context, and not get too overly focused on one thing or another,” she says.
On a personal level, Ella thinks “eating well is more important than it’s ever been before”, since becoming a parent. “Because we want to cook with, and encourage our baby to enjoy home-cooked food and make that a part of what she knows and what she does, but also to have the energy to juggle 7,000 things at any one day! The only way to do that consistently is to make it quick and easy – it has to be genuinely doable on a day-to-day basis.”
■ Deliciously Ella Quick & Easy: Plant-based Deliciousness by Ella Mills, recipe photography by Nassima Rothacker, is published by Yellow Kite, priced £25.