Meghan Markle has certainly stirred up excitement with the release of the first trailer for her new Netflix lifestyle show, With Love.
Set to premiere on Netflix on March 4, the programme will showcase Meghan in various settings, such as the kitchen, garden, and beehive, where she prepares meals and imparts useful tips. As the launch date approaches, interest in her culinary expertise has been piqued.
Prior to her marriage to Prince Harry and subsequent Royal status, Meghan maintained a lifestyle blog named The Tig – a nod to her favourite wine, Tignanello. Here, she frequently posted recipes for her followers.
During her acting career, she made several TV appearances to share some of her recipes, including a stint on The Hallmark Channel where she divulged some taco recipes.
Although The Tig has since been removed from the web, ardent fans of the Duchess have preserved numerous posts, including some of her mouth-watering recipes. Inspired by these and other recipes, I decided to adopt Meghan’s diet for a week.
Emulating Meghan’s dietary habits for a week necessitated swapping my usual Tesco order for Ocado. While this could have been significantly more costly, I managed to secure a 25% discount as a new customer.
This switch was prompted by the fact that some of the unique items in Meghan’s diet were not available at Tesco (such as bee pollen and frozen acai berry), and given that it’s not the pumpkin season, they also didn’t have any in stock.
I embarked on a week-long culinary journey, adopting Meghan Markle’s diet. To my surprise, I found the experience quite manageable and even beneficial to my health, once I had procured the necessary ingredients.
Some of the meals were less satisfying than others, but overall, it was a positive experience with only one dish that didn’t quite hit the mark.
My menu for the week included courgette pasta, pumpkin soup, and fruity acai bowls, all inspired by the Duchess herself.
Breakfasts
The breakfast routine was a bit of a challenge initially, as Meghan starts her day with hot water and lemon, a far cry from my usual caffeine fix. Despite giving it a go, I found myself reverting back to my morning coffee, a habit ingrained since my school days.
However, the food aspect was more successful. I kicked off the week with an acai bowl, following a recipe shared by Meghan with influencer Athena Calderone.
This proved to be a delightful start to the week and a dish I plan to recreate. It also introduced me to bee pollen, a delicious but potentially pricey addition to the bowl.
After a few days of indulging in acai bowls, I decided to switch things up with some oats. In his book ‘Finding Freedom’, which delves into the lives of Meghan and Harry, Omid Scobie revealed that one of Meghan’s preferred breakfasts is steel-cut oats topped with bananas and agave syrup.
While this wasn’t my favourite breakfast, I did give it another go (I had a whole bag of oats to use up) and found that substituting the bananas with blueberries and apples was more to my liking.
Lunches
Meghan often enjoys avocado, kale, and quinoa for lunch. To kick off the week, I tried baked egg and avocado, a recipe she shared on The Tig. It was surprisingly tasty, and I’ll definitely be incorporating it into my lunch rotation.
Another lunchtime choice was avocado toast, seasoned with red pepper flakes, a staple in many of the Duchess’s recipes.
My third lunch of the week was seasoned vegetables with quinoa, a dish Meghan mentioned she used to eat while filming Suits. Although it was enjoyable, I’ve always been more partial to couscous than quinoa, and I couldn’t help but think the meal would have been slightly better with couscous.
Snacks
When it comes to snacks, Meghan favours healthy options like apple slices with peanut butter and kale crisps, the latter of which she shared with Today.com back in 2012, four years before meeting Prince Harry.
After giving Meghan Markle’s kale crisps recipe a go, I also whipped up an avocado dip mentioned in the cookbook ‘Together: Our Community Cookbook’, introduced by the Duchess herself. In her foreword for the book, she reveals that this particular avocado dip has become a regular feature at her own table.
The very same cookbook features a hummus recipe, another favourite snack of Meghanas seen in a snippet from her upcoming Netflix seriesusually accompanied by crackers.
Sampling these snacks proved quite delightful, and I’ve found myself gravitating towards apple slices with peanut butter for a mid-afternoon energy boost a couple times each week. The kale crisps, avocado dip, and hummus are definitely on my list to prepare again.
Another key element of Meghan’s diet is the choice of green juice over an afternoon coffee. Despite trying it consistently throughout the week, the juice left me underwhelmed each time, lacking the zing I was anticipating.
Dinners
Dinner experiences varied. I kicked off with broccoli and hempseed stew spiced to perfection, sans photograph due to its presentation mishap, turning into more of a curry sans riceit was still tasty though.
Next up was Meghan’s courgette pasta, once dubbed by her as “filthy, sexy mush.” Despite its less-than-stellar appearance, it turned out to be quite a delectable meal.
On Wednesday, my culinary adventure led me to a delightful sweet potato and white bean soup from The Tig archives, which turned out to be the highlight of my homemade dinners. Initially sceptical about the recommended apple topping, I was pleasantly surprised by how well it complemented the soup.
No week of dining a la Meghan would be complete without indulging in tacos, a dish she’s known to adore, from sharing a fish taco recipe on The Tig to enjoying chicken tacos with Michelle Obama and presenting a vegan taco recipe on the Hallmark Channel.
As a vegetarian, I gravitated towards the vegan taco option, which, despite being a tad underwhelming and somewhat bland compared to other taco experiences, did not sink to the bottom of my meal rankings. That dubious honour was reserved for the pumpkin soup, marred by an excessive saltiness that even my usually heavy hand with salt couldn’t appreciate.
Come the weekend, I treated myself to some veggie sushi from a local spot, embracing another of Meghan’s favourites. And on Sunday, I succumbed to fries, dubbed by the Duchess as her “guilty pleasure.”
The verdict
Mimicking Meghan’s diet proved to be quite manageable, though it did mean a higher intake of soups than usual. Most meals were satisfyingly hearty, staving off the urge for evening nibbles but had the cravings struck, I had a stash of healthy snacks at the ready.
While I don’t foresee myself strictly adhering to the Duchess of Sussex’s diet in the long run, there are several dishes that I plan to include in my weekly meals. Additionally, I intend to modify some recipes to suit my personal preferences, while maintaining the fundamental elements of the dish.