Meghan Markle's Latest Outing in Africa Is Right Up Her Alley — a Cooking Demonstration!
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are picking up some new recipes to try at their Frogmore Cottage kitchen!
The royal couple continued the first day of their royal tour of South Africa at the Homecoming Centre, an annex of the District Six Museum built to provide former residents with a meeting place to share memories and cook together.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex joined a community cooking activity to showcase the varied cuisines that demonstrate the cultural diversity of the area. They joined residents in food preparations before sitting down to sample the dishes while hearing about the residents’ experiences living in the area.
Meghan then exchanged a copy of Together: Our Community Cookbook, which she helped create with the women of the Hubb Community Kitchen to benefit victims of the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire, with some of the contributors to the District 6 Cookery book.
After wearing a black-and-white print maxi wrap dress by Myamiko (a fair trade brand from Malawhi, one of the countries Harry will visit during the tour!) for their first outing of the day, Meghan changed into a sky blue dress with a wrap tied in a bow around her waist. The dress was actually a rewear — she previously wore it last fall during the couple’s visit to Tonga during their royal tour that also included stops in Australia, Fiji and New Zealand! She also changed her hairstyle in between outings, switching from a low ponytail to loose, bouncy waves.
Cooking and sharing food as a community has always been a subject close to Meghan’s heart. The former actress featured recipes on her now-defunct lifestyle blog, The Tig, and also used bonding in the kitchen as a platform for one of her first projects as a royal. Meghan teamed up with the women of the Hubb Community Kitchen to release Together: Our Community Cookbook, which quickly became a best-selling book and helped raise money to expand operations of the kitchen.
“Working on this project for the past nine months has been a tremendous labor of love,” Meghan said in her first public speech as a royal at a palace luncheon celebrating the cookbook. “I just recently moved to London and I felt so immediately embraced by this kitchen — your warmth and kindness, and also to be able to be in this city and to see in this one small room how multicultural it was.”
She continued, “On a personal level, I feel so proud to live in this city that can have so much diversity. There’s 12 countries represented in this one group of women. It’s pretty outstanding.”
Food has also played a major of the couples’ royal tours. When Meghan, 38, and Harry, 35, headed to Morocco in February, they visited a cooking school in Rabat where they watched a demonstration of children from under-privileged backgrounds learn traditional Moroccan recipes from one of the country’s top chefs, Moha Fedal. They sampled a variety of dishes, including traditional pancakes.
Meghan also received a copy of Chef Moha’s cookbook – and in exchange gave him Together: Our Community Cookbook with a personal note in her gorgeous handwriting.
Meghan and Harry’s tour of Africa marks their first royal tour with their son, Archie, who was born on May 6.
At a briefing at Buckingham Palace held earlier this month, the couple’s private secretary Samantha Cohen told reporters that “not only will this visit serve as an opportunity for the Duke and Duchess to highlight many of the causes they have been involved with for many years, it will demonstrate a modern UK-Africa partnership in action.”
Can’t get enough of PEOPLE’s Royals coverage? Sign up for our newsletter to get the latest updates on Kate Middleton, Meghan Markle and more!
“The Duke of Sussex’s love for Africa is well known; he first visited the continent at the age of 13 and more than two decades later, the people, culture, wildlife and resilient communities continue to inspire and motivate him every day,” she added. “As Her Majesty’s Commonwealth Youth Ambassador, the Duke now has a platform to be able to support young people across Africa in reaching their full potential.”
Meghan will join Harry on visits in South Africa before he heads off solo for engagements in Botswana, Angola and Malawi. The Duchess of Sussex is expected to stay in South Africa with Archie.
