Don’t forget to elevate: What we learnt from Meghan, With Love.

Meghan Markle’s new Netflix series With Love, Meghan is finally here (I know she’s called the Duchess of Sussex now, but, like X will always be Twitter, Meghan will always be Markle to me. Sorry, Meghan).

As a casual follower of The Tig, Meghan’s lifestyle brand, back in the day (I liked the posts in my Insta feed and took on approximately none of the advice), I felt a little sad when she had to shut it down to go off and be a princess. So I was low-key thrilled when I learnt she’d be returning to her roots in With Love, Meghan, especially since I now have more in common with Meghan than ever. Like Meghan, I’m the mother of two small children and some dogs, and I’m also married to a bearded man who is not a prince (is Prince Harry still a prince? Whatever, you get the idea).

After bingeing it all in one sitting, here are my main takeaways from With Love, Meghan:

Keep it simple … kind of

I was surprised by how achievable many of the recipes seemed. A couple of them were even “one-pot” style, where you can just chuck everything in and be done with it. And sure, Meghan’s “one pot” is a Le Creuset while mine is an Anko, but I could totally see myself making the tomato pasta dish she cooks in the first episode, even as she’s careful to clarify that her children aren’t eating “heaps of noodles” while my own sat in front of the TV at that very moment eating literal piles of pasta with melted cheese. Whoops.

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, finesses a sponge cake with her make-up artist, Daniel Martin, in With Love, Meghan.

Find a friend

Central to the conceit of With Love, Meghan is Meghan inviting guests into her pretend home (the show doesn’t use her real one). While I am filled with a cold sense of dread at the very idea of hosting anyone in my home, I did appreciate Meghan’s emphasis on doing things together. Also, I learnt that if you have a friend who is worse than you in the kitchen, it makes you look extra great (although I related a little too much to the worst friend every time – like Meghan’s first guest, makeup artist Daniel, who cuts his finger approximately 10 seconds into the process). On the flip side, if you have a friend who is better than you in the kitchen, they will make you incredible food.

Looks matter

Meghan’s whole thing is to “elevate” – basically, make everything look pretty. She’s into turning every meal or occasion into a “moment” or, as Meghan puts it, a “story”. She also likes to create “worlds”, which also just means arranging things prettily, as far as I can tell. I don’t know that I have the gene that is required to achieve her high skill level of presentation (my chicken-scratch handwriting, for instance, is about as far from her elegant calligraphy as you can get), but I could probably do the cute fruit rainbow she says she makes for her kids.

For a special occasion or a Saturday, of course, rather than a weekday morning that’s dominated by chaos and tears (mostly my own).

Meghan invites Minday Kaling over to create the perfect children’s party. But where are the kids?Credit: Netflix

Crudites, crudites, crudites

Meghan loves crudites. She says she serves them every single day to her kids. Crudités, it turns out, are literally just raw vegetables – beautifully arranged, of course (usually with flowers), and with something yum to dip them into (if you don’t have time to make your own hummus, simply “decant” a store bought one, Meghan suggests). As a parent of a toddler who subsists mostly on snacks, I can get on board with incorporating this more in daily life. In fact, it’s something I already do, except I put cheerios or vegie straws next to the cucumber and carrot on my kids’ plates, rather than flowers. Now, instead of “Here’s your snack plate”, I can say, “Your crudites, my love”.

When in doubt, add flowers. And then more flowers.

When in doubt, add flowers

Meghan adds flowers to everything. She carefully arranges floral displays for brunch with friends, she freezes flowers into ice cubes for drinks, she adds little edible blooms to just about every dish, and she even uses flower “sprinkles” (conveniently, she’s selling these through her new lifestyle brand, As Ever). I probably won’t adopt much of this, not least because I don’t have a garden or $1067 to spend on flowers every week. But what are lifestyle shows for if not to give you unrealistic goals to aspire to? Now, I just need to convince my kids that the dried petals on their ice cream are a good “story” rather than a sad substitute for the sugar and artificial flavours they usually get.

Make the most of your health, relationships, fitness and nutrition with our Live Well newsletter. Get it in your inbox every Monday.