Food Diaries: Yolanda Hadid tells Harper’s BAZAAR what she eats in a day and presents how she prepares her favourite recipes for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
“Hey, good morning! Are you ready to spend the day at the farm with me?
You are what you eat. It’s just a fact. But it doesn’t mean that in my household we don’t have pizzas flying around sometimes or hamburgers.
You know, I have kids, and they love their stuff. But I also think that as a Mom, we lead by example, so I continue to do all my organic, healthy stuff.
You know, I like to start my morning with a glass of lemon water. So it’s very simple. You take a half of lemon. I’m the queen of lemons. Just because they have so many health benefits. It alkalizes the gut. It’s cleansing. It has a lot of nutrients in it, so it’s just a great way to start your morning.
You know, I don’t really drink coffee. I love matcha with goat milk, so I usually do that, but always maybe like 15 minutes after I have my lemon water. Mmm, yummy!
After my lemon water, I do oatmeal. Just because it’s easy, it’s quick. Really gives you great energy to get through your morning. And then I really think that we don’t have enough fat anymore in our diet, so I always put a little bit of organic butter with this cute little butter dish that Gigi made when she was maybe like 8 years old. I like to pit a little bit of almonds on it. Just add a little protein. Then I like to use different fruits. Right now I’m into strawberries just because it’s very low in sugar. Sometimes I put organic honey. But then I also like to use stevia. And if you can get used to the taste, I think it’s a much better and healthier choice than white sugar.
You know, I really love breakfast. It’s a moment where I give gratitude to my beautiful life and having this amazing food – organic food in front of me. And you know I love looking outside and seeing the cows, the geese and the connection with nature. I also think it’s important to take your time to eat breakfast. You know, you can do it in 10 minutes. It doesn’t need to be an hour. But just this moment where you just check in with yourself before you start your day.
So for lunch I always like to have a salad and some sort of protein. Today I’m going to do a aragula salad. I like to make a curry chicken with some grapes in it, some onions. It’s just boiled organic chicken and I put the curry and mayo and onions and celery and all that stuff. I do like it on top of my aragula salad. This combination of brussels sprouts, some cranberries. A little bit of that on it and then just a little bit of dressing that I made with olive oil, honey, a little vinegar. I’m really loving going to the Farmer’s Market and see what’s available in this season and use that in my kitchen. A little bit of salt and pepper and that to me, is just the perfect lunch.
So my favorite afternoon little snack, a little pick me up, is a goat milk, which I use preferably, because it’s so much easier to digest than regular milk. And you just boil a cup. I’m obsessed with cardamon and cinnamon and I boil that, stir it. It’s just a wonderful little afternoon pick me up. And then I sweeten it with honey. I love it. We use cardamon in lemon cake. We use cardamon in goat milk and my kids love it, because their Grandmother, in the Arab kitchen, they use a lot of cardamon, so they kind of learnt it there. It’s just a wonderful afternoon pick me up.
So I like to make my dinner my lightest meal of the day, only because I go to sleep very early so it doesn’t give you much time to digest anything else. So I love to do any kind of soup. I make it easy and start with an organic chicken broth, just for the flavor. You know, you can obviously put in your vegetable juice, whatever you like. I love putting chopped garlic. I put my chopped carrots, onions of course. I mean best thing to flavor. Celery. And then a little bit of zucchini, which is also great for flavor. Salt and pepper. I like to use Himalayan salt just because there are so many great minerals in there. Add a little bit more carrot. Little baby kale. I don’t cook it to long because I don’t want to overcook it. So you wait until it boils. So this is Bragg’s natural yeast. And I love the flavor of that.
When the girls come home late from work, soup is amazing because it digests so fast, because it’s obviously boiled. But on a proper night, when everybody is home on time, they love their spaghetti bolognese, garlic bread, salad. But this will do, you know, for a late dinner. You know, I take such great pride in being a homemaker. I think that when you have children, as a Mom, I want them to keep coming home as long as possible, and by providing a home that feels like an anchor, a place where we can talk about memories and make new memories. We cook, we have a glass of wine and I think that’s what life is all about at the end of the day.
So I’m just going to leave this on the stove for about 30 minutes, 30-40 minutes and then you have the perfect light dinner. I’m going to let this cool down. I think it’s the perfect time to make a fire. So this is really my favorite part of the day. I just made this fire myself. Don’t you agree – I’m becoming a really good East Coast girl.
Thank you for spending the day with me. And see you later. Ciao!”
Watch Yolanda Hadid make her favorite meals in this video: