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I'm Francis Lamb and this is the splendid table from APM. Yes, you know, of course the entire world has their eyes on Paris right now because of the Olympics but today we want to talk about

the other side of that country the south of France it's a place I have never been and also a place I sometimes feel like is somewhere we've all been,

like in our dreams at least.

It is endlessly romantic,

and even the most standard grocery store

will have a little jar of like dry basil in time that they will label herb de provance.

You know, so I would love a life where I am running around in a field of lavender and then taking a dip in the Mediterranean.

Some beautiful new swaths salad waiting for me when I get out of the water.

Instead, I am talking to you from an incredibly sweaty New York apartment in the middle of a 12-day heat wave.

So for a taste of that dream, we have got on the show Rebecca Peppler, author of the absolutely spoon-inducing new book, The Soid.

But first, well dreams are meant to be broken I guess.

Sorry, I didn't mean to go dark.

But our first guest... Sorry, I didn't mean to go dark.

But our first guest also started his story with a dream. Steve Hoffman grew up in a perfectly normal Minnesotan family

and kind of hated his perfectly normal life.

From a young age he knew where he was meant to be in Paris.

He learned French and even lived there for a while as a young man, but more of a life called him back and decades later he and his family decided to give his dream of a French life ago and they actually moved to France, but the South. I let me explain why, but what

...