Italy is a strange Country so no wonder if bakery shops are today in riot against farmers and our Ministery of Finance, because a new legislation has passed allowing we peasants to make bread from our fields: outrageous! Yes, why on Earth you should be offer the chance to taste authentic bread? What if you find out that bread can actually get tastier by the week and you do not need to shop daily for something that your stomach can hardly digest at night? Oh nooo, do we really want that people realize that we have been buying bread made from chemically bleached flour for ages? That bread can be brown yet tasty? Do we want to deprive our industrial mills from mixing contaminated wheat with organic wheat? rotten flour of last season with the new one? Here at PrimoPasso we are ready to make the difference, and we can do it together. Please subscribe to this blog and share the spirit of Mother Nature
Author: Gipi
PrimoPasso goes to Hollywood
Shooting stars Party
It was beginning of August when we wanted to leave the Summer with a memorable farewell. Seasons have the passion of the human beings in Sicily and they grow wild as the the Sun raises. A party for 50, a terrace crowed of happy folks? Yes we can do it… so me and a friend of mine started to make another dream coming true. He brings karaoke machine to let everyone practising their talents.
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I had drems of my own, I confess I wanted to be a dj when I was teeneager, so what a better chance to play music? And another sexy fantasy of mines was being a cocktail barman. So I went to PrimoPasso to get green flauvory lemons (yes, lemons are green, not that dark yellow our hypermarket downstairs tought us) and fresh mint from the courtyard and make my freshly mojto with passion. I was talking about this with a friend today. What we want is to taste love in food, not just organic not just a label but a love experience, the one that the peasant and its tree only experience about. Mojto with passion, squeezed one by one, filter in shaker and serve out of the balcony made me feel more authentic than a prefessional. The night went ahead in its flowerish dresses and its shooting stars till the moment there was neither thirsty nor voice in our throats. And the day after, just a magic dish appeared on the table… it is wonderful to share dreams with friends. Thanks a lot to the friend who gave me such a thoughtful surprise.<a
Do spend Winter where you’ve spent Summer
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In Sicily we learn a lot from old traditions. Summer has always been associated with leisure and entertainment, while Winter being considered harsh and bit depressing. This translates into human relationships too and therefore the motto tells us that if you had fun with a partner met in the jolly season, you should stick with him/her during dull time as well! The partner of choice is the one you can enjoy every season with, not just the sexy bit… oh good old days! And around here time seems never passing, government changes, people live and die, airport gets flooded with tourists during Summer, yet you walk and see the same old PIAGGIO APE50 standing by the pedestrian pavement, dressed with colourful red and yellow handmade paintings, to sell fruit and vegetables in wooden cases for as much as you need to get rid of heavy coins in your light summer shorts.
At Primo Passo we try to keep the good taste and forget what we do not like. What is better than the view of the moon rising embarrassed from the sea to catch the last shine of the sun and then standing up proudly in solitude to fill the terrace with its lights and warm up the waves at night?
First International Fair in Matera
From 7th to 9th July in Matera Primopasso has got its first tasting of the water out there. Producing is hard, selling is just different. The fair was split into a B2B event for Russian buyers followed by a B2C late evening.
Selling to the Russian market is exciting and trying to impress our audience with a spot on presentation is even more! 
Here how we organized our scheduled time for each buyers: 5min presentation of who we are, what we do, how: in a nutshell, we are a group of Sicilian modern peasants offering directly our quality products. 5min presentation of our products in such order: olive oil, thyme, aromatic oil, thyme honey, walnut biscuit, carob biscuits, chocolate&carob dessert and to finish with… wash your hands with our Luffa sponge! Final 5 min to Q&As.
I hope some of our buyers out there will read this post and find it exciting as by then. I do.
We were a wonderful working group, all sharing the same philosophy of modern agricultural: tradition and innovation to make our products fashionable yet authentic in taste.
My biggest joy was when, selling at the stand to consumers, I found the sense of amusement in our clients. No one was familiar with carob biscuits for instance, yet the elders knew the taste of carobs and the youth were excited by a very organic taste so similar to chocolate… a flavour enhancement to every chocoholic!
Primo Passo is crossing bridges and welcome everyone who reads this post to share this joy, cheers!
Special of the (summer) day
These days I have had a special guest around. An old friend from London coming to visit me. He wanted to see with his own eyes the Primo Passo estates and take the chance for some Summer holidays too.
Although Italian, he’s been living in London few years and never been to Sicily before. When I was also there, he was always complimentary about the multimillion price tags attached to many houses in London. By the way, this is my point of view about real estate price: housing costs must be correlated to salaries, as it is salaries that provide the cash to pay down the mortgage in the end and not the expected capital gain.
Anyhow, my local friends organized an unexpected lunch by the sea and maybe my Londoner changed his mind about ‘value for money’. We began at 10,30am sharp by moving the grocery down the cost, including the cooking appliances such as camping kitchen, cook and bricks. We finished by 5ish.
Here the special of the day:
Starter: Martini red with slice of orange and steamed mussels in white wine, olive oil, parsley and pepper
First dish: Linguine alla marinara, i.e. with clams, mussels, shrimps, capers and cherry tomatoes
Second dish: king prawns on the BBQ
Fruits& dessert: pineapple, melon and pineapple cake. Coffee.
Join Primo Passo and live differently, live naturally.
Camurria
Another annoying task to do, another unsolicited duty, another Camurria. This is my favourite Sicilian word when it comes to the daily, sometimes the weekly routine of life. Sicilan yet very cosmopolitan: Camurria can be the partner chasing you, camurria can be an unexpected utility bill waiting in your mailbox. How many can you count today? Sadly, I have plenty of them, but luckly I have few kayaks waiting for me. I take one and leave the world behind sailing where only the fishermen and seagulls dare. And once again I am happy to share this view with you. Join Primo Passo’s and let’s live by Nature!
panem nostrum cotidiànum dà nobis hòdie
Today is Sunday in mid June, and it is time to harvest the wheat… golden wheat field of different varieties are now colouring Primo Passo’s estates. I attach the different pictures of two different varieties. One is ‘Simeto’, selected to be rich in glutine and yield, it is easily recognized for being short thick and straight. The other is ‘Tumminia’, an old authoctone variety which is nowadays rare to find because less productive and not suitable for making pasta. Tumminia wheat has however a strong flavour, and it is more digestible than Simeto.
It is a great gift for me to experience with my own eyes and mouth that wheat is not a commodity to trade on the Chicago stock exchange and I am pleased to share it with you. And let us pray ‘Give us this day our daily bread’
Shooting capers
Last weekend I was shooting capers. Shooting capers, word-by-word translation from Sicilian way of say ‘spararsi la chiappera’ would better translate as ‘showing off with capers’. In the old good days, capers were a limited flavour enhancement in the kitchen. Collected once a year, it was stoved with salt in ceramic jars. If you had dining guests and wanted to impress, you would have taken out the jar and use the capers.
Shooting capers
So last weekend I collected the not-yet blossomed caper flowers one by one including some delicious fruits, washed and taken to dry up in the sunlight with plenty of salt.
Two weeks and they will be ready for more guests to come and to impress across the whole year. Shooting capers takes its time but it’s lots of fun.
At the gates of Primo Passo
Primo Passo 
