As the old saying goes, you should breakfast like a king (or queen), lunch like a prince and eat dinner like a pauper. Well, Princess Diana certainly knew how to start her day right. No boring bowl of cereal or slice of toast for her! Always ahead of her time, Diana loved a delicious, healthy and relatively unknown meal that went on to become a major breakfast trend years later—one that you’ve likely enjoyed at some point.
Her former personal chef, Darren McGrady, recently dished up the tasty details of what was on her menu and how she discovered it nearly two decades before everyone else did. What was it? Here’s a clue: It’s not a stack of pancakes or a blueberry muffin, and there’s not an egg or a sausage in sight. Any guesses?
Place your bets before scrolling down to find out what Diana’s favorite breakfast was—and how you, too, can eat like a royal.
Get Reader’s Digest’s Read Up newsletter for more royals, humor, cleaning, travel, tech and fun facts all week long.
What was Princess Diana’s go-to breakfast?
Diana was an early adopter of overnight oats. McGrady, who cooked for the princess at Kensington Palace between 1993 and 1997, recently posted a video on YouTube showing what he whipped up for Princess of Wales regularly—and it looks absolutely delicious.
“When I became Princess Diana’s chef, she got her life back on track,” McGrady says. “She was patron of 119 different charities; she was working out in the gym three days a week and just looking the best she ever did. She said, ‘Darren, you take care of all the fats, and I’ll take care of the carbs at the gym.’ So this meant that she was now eating healthy, and her go-to breakfast was something called overnight oats.”
And while we all know what overnight oats are now, back in the 1990s, not many people did. So where did she get the idea from? Did she invent them? Not quite …
Where did Diana get the idea from?
According to McGrady, Diana got the idea in Switzerland. “She actually went to a Swiss health clinic, and there, she had these overnight oats, or Bircher muesli. And she thought they were really, really good, and all the ingredients were super healthy,” he says. “She stole the recipe. She came back and said, ‘Darren, I want these for breakfast every day.'”
So what is Bircher muesli? Interestingly, it wasn’t even new in the 1990s. It had actually been invented in the early 1900s by a Swiss physician named Maximilian Oskar Bircher-Benne. He was a pioneer in nutrition and raw food, and he served the muesli—made of raw oats, grated apple, lemon, nuts and condensed milk—to patients at his sanatorium in Zurich, to restore their health.
While it’s not known if Diana actually visited the Bircher-Benner clinic in Zurich, specifically, we do know that she went to Switzerland in 1993, and that’s where she came across the food. Diana was known to be a fan of health retreats and spas; she regularly checked in to the U.K.’s Champneys health retreat in Hertfordshire, north of London, when she needed a reset.
And in 1993, having separated from Prince Charles the year before, she was all about health. She’d overcome her bulimia the previous year, as we learned in her 1995 BBC Panorama interview, and she was concentrating on her health and well-being and was often snapped going to the gym. So it makes sense that Bircher muesli, or overnight oats, would have appealed to her, for its high fiber, vitamins, antioxidants and general nutritional goodness.
How far ahead of the curve was she with this trend?
She was apparently ahead of the curve by nearly 20 years! While you could find packaged, dry muesli in grocery stores in the 1990s, “overnight oats” didn’t hit the mainstream until 2012, with the rise of clean eating and social media influencers. Overnight oats’ simple recipe and pleasing appearance—especially if it was served in a glass or Mason jar—made it a hit on Instagram and Pinterest.
Now it’s a breakfast staple in cafes and homes across America and the U.K. We have to wonder if that would surprise Maximilian Oskar Bircher-Benne if he were alive today!
How different is Princess Diana’s choice from what the other royals ate for breakfast?
Royals in the 1990s would have been served a traditional English hot breakfast consisting of eggs, bacon and sausages, especially if they had guests. The late queen favored a quirky scrambled-eggs dish seasoned with lemon zest and nutmeg, though she often switched things up with a super simple dish. In fact, in 2003, an undercover journalist got a job at Buckingham Palace and revealed to the Mirror that the monarch ate her cereal out of plastic Tupperware, accompanied by plain yogurt, fruit and toast with marmalade.
Ironically, the one person who shared Diana’s love of muesli and overnight oats was her ex. King Charles has always been enthusiastic about nutrition and famously embraced nuts and seeds before they became mainstream. His late chef, Graham Newbould, also revealed on the documentary Secrets of the Royal Kitchens that when Charles travels, he took a breakfast box with him filled with “six different types of honey, some special mueslis, his dried fruit and anything that’s a bit special that he is a bit fussy about.”
How do you make Princess Diana’s overnight oats?
If all this has you wondering how you make Diana’s oats, the good news is, it’s super simple. McGrady soaks rolled oats—not the instant kind—in orange juice overnight. Then, the next morning, he folds in a couple of tablespoons of plain Greek yogurt, a squeeze of lemon juice and honey to taste. “There are many different things that you can add into the dish,” he says, like berries, strawberries and chia seeds, but the classic, traditional dish that Princess Diana had for breakfast includes grated apple, skin on, stirred into the mixture, with a few blueberries and walnuts. “We’ve got texture, we’ve got fiber, we’ve got protein, we’ve just got everything in there.”
How good is this recipe? Let’s just say McGrady used to swipe a little for himself. “I have to admit that when I was making this at Kensington Palace for Princess Diana, it was so good, I actually used to double the recipe so that the chef got it for breakfast too,” he confesses.
We don’t think Diana would have minded one bit!
RELATED:
- Kate Middleton Was Just Spotted Wearing One of Diana’s Favorite Tiaras—Here’s the History Behind the Crown
- Here’s Why Princess Diana Infamously Fell Asleep at a Royal Event (Hint: She Wasn’t Just Bored!)
- Too Cute for Words! Prince William and Princess Kate Welcomed a Few New Additions to the Family—And We Have the Pic
Why trust us
Reader’s Digest has published hundreds of stories on the British royal family, providing a behind-the-scenes look at the fascinating facets of the monarchy. We regularly cover topics including the latest royal news, the history and meaning behind time-honored traditions, and the everyday quirks of everyone’s favorite family members, from Queen Elizabeth’s daily snack to Prince William’s confessions about his home life. We’re committed to producing high-quality content by writers with expertise and experience in their field in consultation with relevant, qualified experts. We rely on reputable primary sources, including government and professional organizations and academic institutions as well as our writers’ personal experiences where appropriate. We verify all facts and data, back them with credible sourcing and revisit them over time to ensure they remain accurate and up to date. Read more about our team, our contributors and our editorial policies.
Sources:
- Darren McGrady YouTube: “Princess Diana’s Overnight Oats recipe”
- BBC Panorama: “Diana’s 1995 BBC interview”
- The Mirror: “Buckingham Palace’s Extraordinary Secrets Revealed by Fake Footman”
- The Palace Papers by Tina Brown
- Secrets of the Royal Kitchens
The post Princess Diana Loved This Breakfast Food Before It Became Trendy appeared first on Reader's Digest.
from Reader's Digest https://ift.tt/hEGcOJZ
Comments
Post a Comment