Food & recipes

Interview with Ella Mills

Eager to make healthy eating accessible to all, food author Ella Mills reveals how motherhood has changed her diet and why batch cooking is her new go-to strategy

I’m pregnant with my second baby at the moment but I haven’t really had as much time to think about this pregnancy as I did with my first. The pandemic has kept us [Ella and her husband/business partner Matthew Mills] on our toes so we’ve been superbusy, and obviously your first baby keeps you occupied. But I’ve had less pregnancy symptoms this time around and I do think that comes from being more relaxed and working from home. I’ve not missed commuting into the office with Skye [Ella’s first daughter].

I wouldn’t say I’m the best at switching off from work. It can be so hard, especially if, like me, your husband works with you; in fact, that’s probably a big part of it as well – it always becomes ‘just one more question’! I’m always busy but I’m lucky that I’ve got an amazing team – Matt and I couldn’t do what we do without them. Over the years, I’ve learnt that health is such a 360 degree approach. It’s great if you’re making nutritious meals and eating all your veggies, but it’s no good if you’re not managing your stress levels or you can’t sleep. It’s often about adding simple rituals into your daily routine, such as five minutes of this and five minutes of that – health is not about niche things or overcomplicating stuff.

Having Skye really helped cement that, especially in those first couple of months when you never really have more than five minutes to yourself. I went back to work when she was four weeks old and I was more exhausted than ever, so I needed those daily rituals back in my life. For me, that’s finding time to do yoga. I’m about to do my teacher training. It’s not going to be yoga for everyone, but it’s about finding what works best for you.

So often we think of health and wellness as quite daunting, but I want to offer support in the areas that people are finding tricky, and that’s often time and accessibility. Having kids has definitely identified the need for batch cooking in my life – otherwise it just becomes one more task to do in the day.My favourite part of cooking is to be able to eat two, three or even four times from just one meal. That can be so rewarding.

In my new book, Deliciously Ella Quick & Easy: Over 100 Vegan Recipes, all you have to do to make three times more of the Spinach and Chickpea Curry is chop more garlic and onion and add a couple more tins of chickpeas – you’re only adding around two more minutes to the cooking time. Do that and you’ve got a meal ready for another day. You could have it with rice and yoghurt or with a baked potato. Batch cooking makes life so much easier, and it’s simple just to double or triple quantities when you’re cooking.

Often, when people think about being more healthy, they think they need to change everything at once – that sets you up for failure, to a certain extent, as it’s not maintainable. Starting slowly and simply is the way to work. We overthink the way that we eat sometimes, when actually it’s about simplifying what we need. There’s a peanut butter noodle recipe in the book that takes as long to make as it does to boil some noodles. My two favourite recipes in the book are the creamy mushroom kale salad – it sounds so boring but it’s got a tanginess to it that I love and I can’t stop eating it – and the walnut mushroom ragu, simply because it’s such a good recipe to cook for friends and family and it’s a firm favourite of my husband’s, too.