White Almond Sicily

This autumn in Sicily as we arrived back home after our usual morning visit to the beach with Daisy we bumped into our neighbour whilst parking our car. The usual pleasantries were exchanged. It was the first time we had seen him since we had arrived back home in Sicily and so he asked “Quando sei arrivato, oggi?” (“Did you arrive today?”), we replied “No, Siamo arriviti sabato sera” (“No, we arrived on Saturday evening”), he explained that he had just come home from his land in the countryside and then handed us a tray of fruit and said “Questo è per te, bentornato a casa” (“This is for you then, welcome home”) we peeped under the piece of newspaper that was covering the fruit and discovered that they were persimmons.  Food always is the best welcome home gift in Sicily. It is quite often that we get a visit by who we call the “Lemon Fairy” and find a bag of lemons left on our street door knocker.  Our lovely neighbour told us that in Italian the word for persimmons is “Cachi...

The Florio Family were a prominent entrepreneurial Italian family who started many lucrative activities in Sicily involving the export of Sicilian products, such as Marsala wine, in the nineteenth century. The family extended their interests to shipping, shipbuilding and fisheries, mainly tuna production and preservation. The historical story of the family, of Calabrian origins from Bagnara Calabra, took place in Palermo between the 19th and 20th century. After a disastrous earthquake destroyed their family home in 1783, Paolo Florio born in 1772 and father to Vincenzo Florio, decided to move to Palermo to start a new life with his wife and young son. He opened in Palermo on Via Materassai a shop selling herbs and spices, colonial products and quinine, which was used to treat malaria. The shop quickly became one of the most prosperous businesses in the city attracting jealousy from fellow business owners who were of true Sicilian descendants and opposed to this new family from Calabria...

Last month whilst at home in Sicily we had to make the heart breaking decision to send our beloved furbaby Daisy over rainbow bridge. In December last year as we arrived back home in London, after our annual autumn trip to our Sicilian house, Daisy became lame in her front left leg, at first we thought it was a sprain but it did not get better, after many tests and x-rays with our vet in London he believed that the problem was neurological and referred her to North Surrey Animal Referral Clinic for a CT scan. Thereafter she was sadly diagnosed with a rare nerve sheath tumour in her chest which was inoperable. Our vet could not tell us how long Daisy had left with us, 3 months, 6 months, one year, maybe longer. He told us that the tumour and lameness was not effecting her quality of life and that she was in no pain and to carry on with life as normal. The tumour was growing downwards through her leg but he said that if it started to grow upwards we would be having a complete different c...