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”. 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