Begin Again with Davina McCall
BONUS Episode: 10 Kitchen Essentials with Deliciously Ella
01 Feb 2026
Chapter 1: What are quick wins for healthy eating?
I'm just going to quickly talk about this.
Yes, quick wins.
Because it came out last year. And this is full of really brilliant, very simple recipes. That's the thing about it.
But what I also started to realise was the mental load for people was so big. So it wasn't necessarily that you didn't have 20 minutes to make supper.
Yes.
But when you've been making decisions all day and you're so overwhelmed and stressed, the mental load of doing it is so big. So I've done eight weeks of meal plans and you've got your shopping list, you've got all your suppers for the week mapped out. So then you get home from work and you're like, right, I'm going to make this super easy supper. I have everything that I need in the fridge.
It's going to take me 15 minutes. I'm ready to go.
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Chapter 2: How can meal planning reduce kitchen overwhelm?
Because as I said, it's not necessarily that we don't have 20 minutes to do an easy tray bake or something like that. It's just the mental load at the end of the day. It's like one more decision. Which is a bit much.
Okay, I'm going to tell everybody. We're going to talk about the weather for two minutes while everybody goes to get a pen and a piece of paper. I want you to tell us. Well, I mean, firstly, I'm going to say to people, go and get quick wins. Because if you want help with, like, literally, it's you tell them what to do.
Yeah. And look, this is everything that I cook at home. It's trying to get that perfect balance between deliciousness, nutrition, speed and ease. Which I think it's got to come together, right? Otherwise, if it's not delicious, you won't keep coming back to it. If it's not easy, you won't keep it up.
And if it's not nutritious, then it's not going to help you in the way that you want it to on a Monday night. And so for me, it's that balance. middling of the Venn diagram that I think is so important.
So I was going to ask you for 10 ingredients that people could have just in their cupboard at all times ready for action.
What will help them? I love that. Okay. Definitely have tins of kind of chickpeas, white beans, etc. that you can use in stews and curries and soups, etc. Like a chunky minestrone with nice bread. Best thing you can eat this time of year on a cold day.
Yeah.
Then I'd also have tins of tomato, tins of coconut milk. Again... Oh, coconut milk. Yeah, so delicious in a soup. Yeah. Got random bits of veg in your fridge, roast it, blend it up with one of your tins of beans for nutrition, and then do coconut milk, some lemon. Ah! Delish. So coconut milk, such an easy win to have in your life. Okay, so we've got tins of beans. We have got...
Tinned tomatoes, coconut milk. I'm counting.
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Chapter 3: What are the top pantry staples for easy cooking?
They all count. Exactly. Take what you can get. I would then definitely have just nice pasta. Again, you know we said for bread earlier, being like people kind of deem nice bread. Yes.
don't eat just loads of plain toast because you can add stuff to it but pasta's the same and like especially if you're cooking for families what about how do we have to eat whole wheat because i i've swapped but i did swap yeah plain pasta for whole wheat and my family didn't notice no and that's great if that's the case but if you do i would just say like the best thing you can do is make a delicious sauce and again that's one of the easiest ways to get loads of plants in
because you can have celery and onion and garlic and tomatoes and carrot and all of the rest of it. Yes. And you can make something absolutely delicious. And then with pasta, probably everyone will eat it. You can have more sauce than pasta. Way more sauce. Exactly. People do tons of pasta and not much sauce. Yeah, no, I would do. Go more sauce. Exactly. Exactly.
Like we mentioned earlier, like a pulled aubergine ragout. It's one of my favourite meals to make. You roast the aubergines till they're like blistering and falling apart. You scoop out all the inside. So is that the pulled bit? Exactly.
So you like pull it out and then you do it with lentils and tinned tomatoes and lots of spices, a little bit of miso, which I actually had put on our list as well. It's an easy way to add flavour. And it's fermented food. It's good for your gut. But, you know, my kids were like... and like hoover that up with pasta.
Whereas if I was like, if I just gave them all the ingredients by themselves, they would not. Okay, so we've got pasta, just general grains, be that whatever you like to eat, rice and like bulgur wheat, quinoa, etc.
Rice, browns are better than white. There's a big thing I think on the internet about that.
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Chapter 4: How can frozen ingredients simplify meal prep?
Yeah, there is a big thing on the internet. It depends what you eat because again, it's a really nice place. Do you know where I learned that from? Where? Your pod. Yeah, exactly. No, because it's like, what will you eat? You know, like, yes, lots of us struggle to get enough fiber, as we've said. But if then you're doing, I don't know, I've been doing this. Look, I'm still holding.
I know, still holding. Marinated cucumbers and things like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do it with white rice. You're still getting so much goodness in. Like, don't overstress about it. Okay, we've got rice. Then I'd move to your freezer. I would always have a bag of frozen mixed berries. Yes. Such a big help. Frozen peas. Again, go in everything. Or I wanted to add oats.
Yeah, I'll do oats as my last one.
I mean, we could go on. We could go on. This is very, very, very, very helpful.
Yeah. But like we were saying about the fancy beans on toast, like there you've got garlic, which you could always have frozen, but you'd get home and you just literally, all you need to buy on your way home would be some tomatoes and some garlic. And then you're putting in the chili that you've already had, the beans you already have, et cetera. And you're just using what you've got.
And again, it feels so much more doable when you're like, right, I need to buy two ingredients as opposed to, oh my gosh, I've got to go and buy 25 things I've never heard of. I love that idea of using leftovers and repurposing things.
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