White Almond Sicily

"Happiness is like Jam - You can't spread even a little without getting some on yourself!" 'Summer Fruits' usually describes a mixture of summer berries, typically blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants and blackberries. We are still stuck in London due to Covid_19 and missing Sicily very much but one thing that helps getting over "Sicily Syndrome" (the sickness of missing Sicily. I made that up) is picking the abundance of blackberries from the bramble bushes that grow around the back of our garden in London.  But don't tell anyone they are my little secret. In any case they are well guarded by our dog Daisy.  I cannot remember these brambles being there when we first moved into our home but each year they multiply in size and yield more and more delicious plump berries.  In Sicily we do not have these kind of blackberries but we do have are mulberries.  Mulberries translated into Italian is Gelsi . It is not known how th...

" To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is not to have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything "  Wolfgang Von Goethe, 1787 Last month my husband and I celebrated our 25th Silver Wedding Anniversary. As we had to cancel our return home to Sicily this April due to the Covid_19 outbreak we decided to celebrate in the UK and booked a country hotel in Dorset and lunch at one of our favourite celebrity chefs, Rick Steins restaurant, with Daisy.  However as the pandemic worsened hotels and restaurants closed in the UK and we needed to make alternative plans. The next best thing was maybe a picnic somewhere fabulous. Painshill Park is an award winning 18th century landscaped garden in Cobham and is located about half an hours drive from us on the London-Surrey border. The gardens had been closed for social distancing reasons but luckily for us they reopened just in time for our anniversary and Painshill Park seemed like the perfect place for a romantic pi...