For millions across the UK, the daily scramble of work deadlines, school runs, and household chores leaves little mental energy for planning a nutritious evening meal. The result? A reliance on fish finger sandwiches, ready meals, and crisps eaten standing at the kitchen counter. Recognising this modern dilemma, food entrepreneur Ella Mills – better known as Deliciously Ella – has penned a solution-focused new cookbook titled 'Quick Wins: Healthy Cooking For Busy Lives'.
From Weeknight Panic to Plant-Powered Plates
Mills, 34, conceived the book from personal experience. A few years ago, with her business booming, she found herself returning home to the relentless question of what to feed her husband, Matthew Mills, and their two daughters, Skye and May. "I'd get home and it's like, 'What's for dinner?' and it's like, 'I don't know, I don't have the headspace to figure out what's for dinner'," she recalls. The mental load was so high that by 7:30 pm, toast often seemed the only viable option.
Her strategy to break this cycle was to adopt "gentle mapping" of weekly dinner ideas combined with some Sunday batch cooking. This simple shift, she says, created immediate ease, variety, and removed a significant source of daily stress. The 'Quick Wins' philosophy is built on this foundation: providing a flexible framework, not a rigid meal plan, to answer that "annoying, age-old question" with minimal fuss.
Recipes Designed for Real Life
The book, published by Yellow Kite and priced at £25, is packed with recipes demanding little time or washing-up. Expect one-pan dinners, store-cupboard meals requiring just one fresh ingredient, and dishes that can be batch-cooked, frozen, and reinvented. Mills emphasises seamless, delicious, and nutritious solutions for chaotic Tuesday nights after school clubs.
To illustrate, the book includes recipes such as a Chunky Chickpea and Lentil Soup with Tahini and Tomatoes – a one-pan, nine-plant lifesaver that freezes brilliantly. Another is a Creamy White Bean and Mushroom Orzo Risotto, a cosy, one-pan comfort dish packed with seven different plants. For maximising leftovers, a Pulled Aubergine Tortillas with Crispy Roasted Cabbage recipe transforms a hearty miso aubergine ragù into a whole new meal.
A Shift in the Wellness Conversation
Since starting her blog in 2012 to manage chronic health issues, Mills has witnessed a dramatic shift in the UK's food landscape. A pioneer of the plant-based movement, she now reflects on the backlash against restrictive "clean eating," acknowledging the initial frustration some felt. However, she is excited by the increased public awareness around whole foods and additives.
Despite this, she highlights a stark reality: 50% of calories in the UK now come from ultra-processed foods (UPFs), a figure rising to 80% for one in five people. Concurrently, only one in five Brits achieves their five-a-day, and vegetable consumption is at a 50-year low. "We have a multi-trillion dollar wellness industry, yet our health is getting worse," she notes.
Mills advocates moving wellness away from expensive powders and gadgets and towards practical, daily "little wins." The goal, she suggests, is not terror at one bite of UPF, but empowerment to gradually reduce them and increase plant intake. She recommends aiming for around 30 different plants a week, but starting by simply adding three or four.
"With the noise and overwhelm of people's lives, coupled with the food landscape we live in... it's really, really difficult. Therefore, moving 1% closer to your goal every day will get you miles closer to where you want to be," Mills advises. She stresses that for most, it's not about willpower but busy lives, and promotes building "gentle foundations" that can ebb and flow with life's demands, rather than all-or-nothing diet commitments.
'Quick Wins: Healthy Cooking For Busy Lives' by Ella Mills (Yellow Kite, £25) is out now, offering a pragmatic toolkit for anyone seeking to nourish themselves well amidst the chaos of modern British life.
