Hello, I'm Miriam. Writer, kitchen herbalist, garden crafter, and cook. My first love was the feeling of quiet solitude I felt on long family walks in the rain as a child - walks I always complained about but secretly loved. I always sought solace in the farthest away places, wrote poems about poppies and did my thinking from the top of the meadow on the edge of town.
My mother is my first inspiration for this work. She is the most effortless of nature's workers, and my first and foremost teacher of gardening, herbalism and all things green. I was a bit of a reluctant gardner as a teenager, whilst I loved the view out onto our beautiful wilderness from my bedroom window, getting cold and muddy wasn't necessarily my idea of fun. But when I moved to London something in my soul lurched - and I realised I needed to return to that space, of listening to my mother, and being told off for pulling up the wrong 'weeds'.
Moving to Morocco pushed me effortlessly into an endless ocean of beautiful knowledge, songs of the wind and the rain, of food and good times and of all of the most beautiful moments of our lives - it taught me what the body was, and how we should heal it. I studied traditional medicine from the humblest of wise fellows, experimented, asked questions and walked in the woods. I found fields upon fields of mint, olive, carob and fig, and I started to see it all connect.
I've since married Hamza, craftsman extraordinaire, and become a mum to little Yacoub, who is currently working towards a career as an escape artist. I've learnt recipes from my mother in law and my friends' mums, and tried them out (and sometimes failed) in our white-washed kitchen that we built ourselves.
Settling into it all now with the deep exhale of womanhood, here I am, offering up what I can from this corner, in an attempt to build a community of engaged and connected cooks, herbalists, women, lovers and friends.
I'm so glad to have you along for this journey. Please feel free to get in touch at info@atlasapothecary.com
