CHARITY COOKBOOK
DUCHESS MEGHAN WROTE FOREWORD FOR THE BOOK OF RECIPES, WHICH FEATURES DISHES FROM EUROPE, THE MIDDLE EAST, NORTH AFRICA AND THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN
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READY for chef Meghan Markle — the royal foodie who is using her love of cooking and delectable eats to help feed and heal the dispossessed.
Kensington Palace announced Monday that Duchess Meghan will host a book party at the palace on Thursday to launch “Together, Our Community Cookbook,” a book of recipes celebrating the power of food and communal cooking to strengthen communities and bring people together.
And the menu for the party sounds delish: homemade coconut chicken curry, aubergine masala and a range of chapatis and sharing dips, plus caramelized plum upside-down cake and spiced mint tea.
Meghan is scheduled to be all-in helping to prepare and serve the food.
Husband Prince Harry will be at the party, too, but this latest engagement on the royal couple’s diary is mostly focused on Meghan’s burgeoning charity work as the newly minted HRH Duchess of Sussex.
A cookbook is an apt charity project for Meghan: Food and cooking are mostly non-controversial topics for royals, and Meghan is a known lover of both judging from her social media activity prior to marrying Harry in May. (She had to close down her accounts, like her lifestyle blog, The Tig, which was named for her favourite wine.)
Plus, supporting and raising money to help those displaced and hurting from the horrifying Grenfell Tower fire in London last year has become a new cause for the Royal Family in general. More than 70 people were killed and thousands were displaced in the June 2017 conflagration.
To that end, Meghan has written the foreword for the cookbook, which features 50 recipes from Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean.
The recipes were compiled by a group of women affected by the fire who organized a community kitchen at the Al Manaar Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre in West London to gather and prepare fresh food for their families and neighbours as a way of helping their community connect, convene and heal through communal eating.
Meghan first visited the kitchen in January 2018, before her May wedding, and has continued to make regular low-key private visits, according to the palace, which issued several never-seen pictures of Meghan cooking with the women at the centre.
Meghan liked how the communal kitchen project empowered women at a grassroots level, according to her foreword.
“I immediately felt connected to this community kitchen; it is a place for women to laugh, grieve, cry and cook together,” she wrote in her foreword. “Melding cultural identities under a shared roof, it creates a space to feel a sense of normalcy — in its simplest form, the universal need to connect, nurture, and commune through food, through crisis or joy — something we can all relate to.”
The Hubb Community Kitchen — hubb means love in Arabic — will be the beneficiary of proceeds from sales of the book, to be released on Thursday in Britain. The idea is to help the kitchen stay open and thrive, to widen its reach and “keep the global spirit of community alive,” Meghan said in her foreword.
Her pal, Serena Williams, promoted and praised both Meghan and the book on her Instagram page.
“I used to call you Meghan (and I still do) but dear Duchess of Sussex your first project, “Together,” a cookbook (brings) women of all cultures together. I could not be more excited about it and proud of you. It’s beautiful — diversity, inclusivity, coming together in grief or joy — there is just so much love,” Williams enthused.
At the palace party, the Hubb women will showcase personal recipes featured in the cookbook, many of which have been handed down through generations.
The royal couple will sit down to chow down on the freshly made food with guests that will include members of the local community, executives from the cookbook’s publisher, Penguin Random House, and representatives from the Al Manaar Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre and The Royal Foundation.
Meghan and Harry have several times said publicly that cooking meals together is a favourite pastime. After announcing their engagement in November 2017, he said he proposed to her while they were making a roast chicken in his Nottingham Cottage digs at Kensington Palace.
“I immediately felt connected to this community kitchen; it is a place for women to laugh, grieve, cry and cook together. Melding cultural identities under a shared roof, it creates a space to feel a sense of normalcy ...” MEGHAN MARKLE From the foreword of “Together, Our Community Cookbook” The Hubb Community Kitchen, hubb means love in Arabic, will be the beneficiary of proceeds from sales of the book, to be released on Thursday in Britain.