Harry and Meghan Reunite With Cookbook Partners in Nottingham Kitchen
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, pulled on an apron and cooked again with four women she first met in a community kitchen after a London fire.
She and Prince Harry visited the Himmah Hub community space in Nottingham as the second stop on a day of engagements in the city. They arrived at 12:30 p.m. to cheers from a crowd of about 60 people, according to Town & Country.
Himmah is a local charity that works on food poverty, racism and inequality. In 2021, it received a £10,000 donation, about $13,400, from the proceeds of Together: Our Community Cookbook.
Meghan created that book in 2018 with the women of the Hubb Community Kitchen in west London. The group had come together to cook for neighbors after the Grenfell Tower fire, the deadly high-rise fire in the capital. Meghan had volunteered in the kitchen before the book project took shape, and the book was built to raise money to keep the kitchen open every day, as reported by the Los Angeles Times.
The book holds 50 recipes from people who used the communal kitchen at Al Manaar, a mosque and community center near Grenfell, according to BBC and Reuters. It was published four months after Meghan's May 2018 wedding, when she was still a working royal carrying out official duties for the monarchy.
In Nottingham, the reunion was personal. Meghan hugged the Hubb women in the Himmah kitchen. Four contributors were there: Leila Hedjem, Faiza Hayani Bellili, Intlak Alsaiegh and Dayo Gilmour.
She stayed in touch. Alsaiegh said Meghan had kept contact with the group over WhatsApp.
Harry and Meghan both put on aprons. Meghan helped cook a West African dish already being prepared by a Himmah chef. Afterward, the couple had lunch upstairs with about 50 supporters of Himmah, the Hubb kitchen and a program for young people affected by violence.
What makes this stand out is the thread back to Meghan's first major charity project in Britain. For American readers who met her as an actress and then a duchess, this was the work that introduced her public role: cooking, listening and putting other women's recipes and names on the cover.
