Food Blog: Ella’s Edit: February Round-Up

Ella's February wrap-up, favourite recipes and more

My February Round-Up

💌 Reflections on 2024 so far
🥑 Current favourite, on-repeat recipes
🫧 Wellness recommendations from this month

As I sat down to write my February founder's email, I felt really emotional reflecting on what's been happening over the last few months.

As a founder, you see all the problems the business faces every single day (and trust me there's no end to the number of challenges!). No journey to success is linear in any area of our lives, and that certainly includes both our careers and our health. We've had a few knocks this year, but we've also had some huge leaps forwards that I feel so incredibly proud of.

One of my 2024 resolutions was to celebrate the wins and live more in the present, minimising my time spent catastrophising. So, this email is a little reflection on those wins.

When we started it was unclear whether it was possible to scale a food products company that only used kitchen cupboard ingredients, when the industry norm is a mixture of flavourings, emulsifiers, stabilisers etc.

Learning how to approach the industry in such a different way has been incredibly challenging at times, consistently going against the status quo. It's more expensive, and much more difficult to get standardisation from each product coming off our production lines due to the natural changes in ingredient profiles throughout the year. There have been a lot of partners who simply said 'it's not possible, we can't work with you'.

In 2016, our first year of selling our food products, we worked round the clock and did £1 million in sales. This year we did £1 million in the first two weeks of January. We've just launched into Co-op and Asda, which means we're now in all the main UK retailers, and our entire Plants range has launched onto Ocado. We hope to announce more stockists later this year.

It finally feels as though it is viable to grow a company that uses kitchen cupboard ingredients only and that's what we're celebrating right now. I know the bigger we get, the more impact we can have. Each time we get a listing, it means we're moving a more natural, plant-based product onto shelf in place of something with more additives, which moves us one step closer to changing the food landscape.

As always, we're incredibly grateful for your support and insight. We want to ensure you continue to have a say in everything we do, so keep an eye out for an email next week about our new community-focus group, 'The Deliciously Ella Lab'.

Ella x

5 recipes I've loved this month

I (mostly) find cooking at the end of the day really relaxing. Instead of seeing it as one more thing on my to-do list, I use it as a moment for myself. I listen to a podcast or put on a favourite playlist, then sit down with my husband and catch up on life over the meal. It's a calming, nourishing way to slow down after a busy day. I do like quick, simple recipes though, ones that brilliantly deliver on both taste and goodness. So, this is what I've been cooking this month.

Spicy Smashed Chickpeas

An old favourite, and such a good 10-minute meal. I make these for lunch a lot when I'm working from home, or for dinner when I'm by myself. The harissa gives them such a good flavour, and they're just perfect piled on toast with some smashed avocado.

Cook now

Nourishing Garlic
& Chilli Green Pasta

I absolutely love pasta, and this has definitely been my go-to recently. With under 10 ingredients, it's such an easy win for busy weeknights as it's packed with goodness from the spinach and lentils.

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Nutty Sweet Potato
& Quinoa Salad

I've been making this recipe for years. The tahini and almond dressing is something I come back to again and again, it's just so perfectly creamy (and you don't need a blender to make it!) and it instantly adds so much flavour. Toasting the almonds in tamari makes all the difference too, it adds a great little salty punch to each bite.

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Easy Roasted Garlic
& Tomato Soup

The whole family has been quite coldy the last few weeks, so I've been making us big batches of soup. This is my favourite, partly because it's really easy and partly because it tastes so much like Heinz tomato soup (but better and of course packed with so much goodness!). It just gives you that cosy, comforting sense of nostalgia.

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Chickpea, Avocado
& Tomato Toastie

My other go-to, speedy work lunch. I make a big batch of the smashed chickpea mix at the start of the week, then just use it over the course of a few days. It's great in jacket potatoes too!

Cook now