Ella Mills, known as Deliciously Ella, has released a new cookbook titled Quick Wins: Healthy Cooking For Busy Lives, aimed at helping time-pressed individuals prepare nutritious meals with minimal effort. The book focuses on one-pan dinners, store-cupboard meals, and batch-cooking ideas that can be frozen and transformed into new dishes.
Mills, 34, says she created the book after experiencing the same struggle herself: a hectic schedule juggling work, family, and household chores left her resorting to toast for dinner. She began mapping out weekly dinner ideas and doing Sunday batch cooking, which made life easier and increased variety in meals.
The cookbook is not a rigid meal planner but a flexible framework to answer the “annoying, age-old question of, ‘What’s for dinner?’” It includes recipes that take around 15 minutes, such as “fancy beans” or a tray bake with rice, tofu, and garlic yoghurt. Mills emphasises minimal washing up and chaos on busy weeknights.
Mills started her Deliciously Ella blog in 2012 after struggling with chronic health issues, pioneering the plant-based “clean eating” movement. Reflecting on the backlash the movement later received for being restrictive, she notes how the food landscape has changed since her debut cookbook in 2015, with greater awareness of whole foods. However, she warns that in Britain, vegetable consumption is at a 50-year low, and ultra-processed foods account for 50% of calories, calling for a shift from expensive wellness trends to simple daily wins.
