Libby Travers: Food, Love, and Building a Life in Provence

In this episode, I'm joined by fellow Australian Libby Travers - food writer, co-author of Meat: The Ultimate Companion, and the voice behind the newsletter Eight Days. Libby splits her life between Provence and Australia, and we talk about what it actually means to build a writing life (and a food life) between two countries.

We get into her Provence origin story: a life-changing teenage meal at a tiny bistro that no longer exists, a map of the Mediterranean built entirely around where the olive tree grows, and the unlikely way she met her French husband on a remote path in Crete. From there, the story of the ruin they turned into a home: a year living in a yurt, a house built in six weeks before their son was born, and all the ancient, unspoken wisdom baked into two-hundred-year-old Provençal architecture.

Libby also shares her favourite places to eat (including a bistro with a Charles Aznavour cameo you have to hear to believe), the foods and traditions she's learned from neighbours and in-laws, and why Provence's family food rules leave no room for flexibility. And we don't shy away from the harder truths either - including what athe recent string of brutal heatwaves is doing to her sense of the region's future.

Whether you're drawn to Provence for the food, the romance, or the whole complicated reality of it, this conversation has all three...