They say the kitchen is the heart of the home, and in Frida Redknapp's case, it couldn't be truer. In fact, it's the secret to her happy marriage.
"It's the simple, daily things," says the 45-year-old Swedish-born model and entrepreneur, who has been married to the former England footballer and Sky Sports pundit Jamie Redknapp, 53, for five years. "Every day we check in on one another, do little things. He makes me coffee every morning and it means so much. Jamie and I love to be at home, standing here in the kitchen, having a nice, relaxing time."
As she welcomes HELLO! into the couple’s stunning west London home and brews morning coffee for Jamie in the modern kitchen, Frida, the founder of the recently launched whole-food cooking blend range Frood, reveals how the space has become the centre of their Friday nights.
"I put the iPad on, [watch something] like Friends, pour myself a nice glass of red wine and I cook. I know the kids are in the house and it's the end of the week, so I love that."
Blended family life at home
The couple celebrated five years since they married at the Chelsea Registry Office on 18 October. "Friends tried to introduce us for a long time," she recalls. "Then we crossed paths, and it was straight away, you know? He's an amazing person and he's one of my best friends."
Frida, who has lived in Paris and New York, modelling for brands including Escada and Victoria's Secret, says they marked the occasion with a meal at their favourite restaurant in the city. "It's French cuisine, nice fish, beautiful food."
The couple have seven children between them in their blended family as well as a new Staffordshire Bull Terrier puppy, Bjorn. Frida has four children with her former husband, the American hedge fund manager Jonathan Lourie, including three sons aged 13, 16 and 19 and a 20-year-old daughter, who split their time between both homes. Jamie has two sons, Charley, 22, and Beau, 17, with his former wife, the singer Louise Redknapp, whom he divorced in 2017. Frida and Jamie welcomed their first child together in 2021, a son, Raphael.
Frida smiles as she recalls recently showing four-year-old Raphael their wedding photo. "I was pregnant when we got married, so I showed Rapha a picture of me in the wedding dress. My friend Emilia Wickstead did the dress. It's so nice to look back at those pictures. It was such an intimate, small wedding, but it meant so much."
She says that Raphael, who has just started school, is a "happy little boy; he gets on with things, he's delicious". Now, Frida is back on the school run. "I couldn't believe that I've gone back to reception," she says. "It's fun, it's such a different experience; you change so much as a parent at different ages. I think Rapha is lucky that I'm somewhat laid-back now because I've seen it all, so I don't get flustered or stressed about little things."
Did she always want a big family? "Yeah, it just happened, and I loved it. I didn't have that many siblings growing up, so maybe I just created my Swedish family here because obviously all my family is in Sweden. I'm so grateful I have so many kids."
Family life is evident throughout the house: individually named water bottles sit organised on a trolley, and a huge collection of footballs fill the goal at the end of their garden.
"There's a lot!" Frida laughs . "I keep putting them away into the basement. [I say,] 'Let's just keep three out there,’ but they keep reappearing. I think Rapha goes into the basement and brings them all out.
"Raphael always liked to kick a ball, but the last few months he's [become] obsessed! He comes home from school and he's out there; it's so cute because he loves it when Jamie teaches him things."
Frida enjoys watching football, too. "Because we have so many boys, I've been watching football for so many years. I love watching a football match, so Jamie's lucky."
Health and fitness are a running theme in the Redknapp household, as is evident on Frida's Instagram page, where she shares her workout routines and recipe ideas. Outside her kitchen door is a collection of weights stacked neatly, plus a sauna and cold-plunge bath – a nod to her Swedish heritage.
Staying fighting fit in her 40s
"Trying to keep moving is something I'm extremely consistent with since I became a mum," Frida tells us. "At one point I had four kids under the age of six at different schools. I wanted to take care of my body, so I had a sustained amount of energy."
"Since my thirties, I really started treating my body like a proper temple," she says. She does at least four to five workout sessions a week, incorporating weight training with "less reps but heavier weights" to support bone density and strength.
"I also try to do cardio. I love to break into a sweat, I think it's so good for you, so we do boxing once or twice a week." Jamie often joins her. "We're very similar when it comes to training, we really enjoy it."
Lagree Pilates on the Megaformer apparatus is another favourite. "It's high-intensity Pilates. I've been doing that for over a year now and it's so good for your core strength."
Frida swears by creatine, and she pops the supplement into the smoothie she makes as we talk, along with berries, banana, peanut butter and coconut water. "A lot of women are scared of it [creatine] because they're worried about water retention, but your body adjusts after a few weeks. It's worth it. It's for brain fog, muscle recovery and sleep."
A few years ago, Frida started meditating to give herself "a few moments here and there. I've learnt a technique of just resetting and breathing and coming back into a kind of a calm".
Her passion for food and cooking began during her childhood in Borås, south-west Sweden.
"What I love about the Swedish people in general is we like things in a simple way. I would spend time with my grandparents and go to their tiny vegetable patch, pick up carrots and potatoes, walk into the kitchen and they would prep everything then and there. We would go up to the north of Sweden, [where] my grandfather had a timber lodge, no electricity, and we would go fishing. We had an earth cellar which stored the butter and the milk underground.
"My love for cooking on my own started probably because my mum worked really hard. My mum was a single mum; she worked night shifts in care homes and worked as a housekeeper, so I would try to make meals for her when she came home from work. And she was like, 'Thank you,’ because it was made with love."
Turning a passion for wellness into a business
Frida started modelling when she was three and lived in New York by 15. She believes this helped expand her palate and piqued her interest in cooking. She subscribes to the Swedish philosophy of “lagom”, which means "just the right amount of everything”, she says. "When I cook Swedish meals, I always do little healthy tweaks to every recipe."
Inspired by her Swedish heritage, Frida came up with the idea of Frood, which she launched in June: a range of four whole-food cooking blends (Swedish Meatballs, Bella Bolognese, Golden Curry and Mexi Fiesta) to help people create quick, delicious and nourishing meals. Each blend includes gently dried fruits and vegetables, grains, seeds and plant proteins, which you add to your chosen protein and carbohydrate.
"I call it my sixth baby," she says. "It's something I'm very proud of and something I have lived and breathed. I wanted to help busy people create home-cooked meals faster because it's often a problem and I had that frustration myself."
Frida spent months experimenting with ingredients and dehydrating them in her home kitchen. "When you gently dehydrate vegetables, the fibre and mineral levels stay consistent," she explains.
© Alan Chapman/Dave Benett/Getty IHer family was her test audience. "Harsh focus group, right?" she says. "Your kids are brutally honest, so they would always tell me the truth. You have no idea how excited I get when the kids love my products." Does Jamie get involved with cooking? Frida sums up the situation: "We now have a funny tagline: 'If Jamie can do it, anyone can do it.’ He can cook with Frood."
Frida plans to expand the brand with a breakfast range next year. Another dream is to write a Swedish cookbook, and perhaps have another home there. "I'm working on it heavily; I just love Sweden."
She misses the country's natural landscape, explaining: "Jamie works on weekends – it's football, Premier League – so it's hard for us to escape [the city], plus a lot of my big boys have [sports] fixtures. Whenever we can, we go see Jamie's parents down on the south coast."
Prioritising confidence and pushing herself
For Frida, her forties are about confidence. "I don't really care what people think, you know yourself in your forties. I never thought I would wake up like I did two years ago, have this idea and start a business. I learnt so much about myself, pushing myself and believing that I can do something. It's never too late."
A natural in front of the camera, Frida wouldn't say no to working on TV. "If there's an opportunity to do something on TV and it was the right thing and aligned with what I love to do, of course I would be interested in doing that. What's important for me is to be genuine and authentic, and stay true to what you believe in."
For more information on Frood, visit Frieda's website.
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