There are several ways to experience the dawn. It can be a long nightout ending too late, an early shift at work, the time to catch an airplane for your next destinations… This is our personal experience of the dawn. Both the one we love the most and the hardest to swallow. Winter is made for this vision to come everymorning from the terrace of our premises. Stars leading the way to the new day. Moon turning shy and disappearing at the presence of Sun. And colours everywhere to appear again discovering the presence of the fishermen’s boats that will download their net over our barbeques in just few hours.
< And the the hard bit is when you anticipate the Sun to catch the return fly. Moving to the buzz of metropolitan life has the glamour without having the gentle touch of a sunlight sliding over the Sea to warm up your sleeping face with its kiss. Yet the Etna mountain, our Mongibello, as you have leanrt it by now, is there with its white hat and smoking pipe, to witness both our repeated farewell and arrivederci!
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January Amateur’s photos
Winter is never dull and dark in Sicily. Even when the horizontal masterwheel of Primo Passo is sleeping, Nature shows her benevolent face to the people who can see. I post here for the first time a couple of pictures, unusually taken by some new friends of this venture. All the pictures in this website are accountable and shot directly. Those friends of us have captured the very unique moments of the striking signals of Mother Nature presence. The first is courtesy of Enrico, who captured Casa Primo Passo sorrounded by a fleet of migrating birds.
The second is the picture of a short eruption from our vulcano Etna last 12th Jan, a picture taken from our location in Capo Santa Croce. You will appreciate how close the lava strips seem to the lights of Catania, as if the city itself was in danger. It was not. The contrasting colours of city life, dark sea, white snow let us breathless. But do not be worry and enjoy this as you would enjoy the fireworks at New Year’s Eve. The Etna vulcano, the highest active vulcano in Europe (more than 3,000 meters), is called by natives ‘Mongibello’, which means ‘beautiful mountain’, a tender parental word of love from its inhabitants who have been receiving the benefits of highly fertile vulcanic soil for centuries and centuries.
Christmas time at our Premises
Christmas is a slow moving joy that builds up over the previous days. Nature is offering colours all suddently. Orange and tangerine trees turns full of orange and red balls. Lemon trees turn their green lemons into bright bleached yellow. Christmas flowers start spontaniously paint themselves in red dressing code. We mow the land for the new season while the Etna vulcano starres at us with its pale white hat. Sky is blue and the earth is still fresh and soft as we just cracked the dawn. It is colours all over and we feel alive and happy. We cannot keep all this joy within us, so we grab few tangerines, and we wrap them into tiny bags and send it out to our friends in Milan. The best we can do to wish our friends a merry natural Cristmas is to let as many of you share those gifts that Mother Nature has given us again this year. Merry, simple, mindful Christmas to all of you who passed by and donated some of your precious time to read this through.
Saint Martin’s Summer
In Sicily calendar is set by the upcoming Saint’s celebrations and November is when we celebrate Saint Martin. Typically this is the farewell time to Summer and this means more than 20 degrees and still acceptable water temperature for the last baths of the year. It went as predicted and we enjoy a long day by the beach, starting at 6,30am to enjoy the view of the dawn from our terrace and then continuing sippig cappuccino in shorts blessed by the warm sunshines. And while getting ready, suddently the bells were ringing, cows’ bell more precisely! Landscape at this time of the year is green and offer great pastures for spoiled cows enjoying the spells of sunshine by the coastline. Milk and cheese will come soon, so please stay tuned and subscribe here!
Find a watermill and you’ll find a friend
Yesterday I was passing by a tiny village out of Milan, when I saw this watermill. Lost in his magnificent solitude, not afraid to show his wringles to the everyday drivers. I compare it with mine, and find the same sense of pride against time and modern life. The wheel was working till the recent past, mashing corn flour most likely from a tiny river still aside. It has vertical wheel, not horizontal like mine, it is tall and made friendship with a climbing ivy, there to protect the pillars against the humidity of country winter. Not far from this place, the name of the village is Terrazzano, there is a jellow label pointing to a Sicilian food products outlet. What a coincidence… so I follow the lables and reach this place. No frills and straightforward like a sicilian peasant. Carmelo runs it together with his milanese wife, who still cannot understnd what her husband says in Sicilian. Guests ask for olives and he shouts: ‘olive punciute’! (i.e. nailed olives, stuffed with a blend of spices).
I buy some pistachios cream (try it, a better substitute for nutella) and I buy my favourite delicacy in the kitcken: dry salted swordfish eggs. It is a flavour enhancement from Marzameni, a beautiful fisherman village on that corner of sicily where Europe bath together with Africa. When I pay for it, Carmelo starts making his maths… and then tells me, just give me —- euros. Only the eggs were costing more than ——– euros, but friendship you cannot pay.
Live your emotions
It is Sunday late morning and we are just up after a long Saturday of celebration of our first debut to the Milanese buzz. Everything began with Pino asking me ‘What is Glamour?’ I answered ‘Glamour is anything capable of giving emotions through the involvement of all 5 senses’. And so I said to Pino, I’ll make Glaumour with bread. He smiled. No more words we needed. And emotions were running high last night; Emotions by music, a special mention to Gatto Panceri’s unique voice and vibrating lyrics. Emotions by the flashing lights and colour of a stylish location, which I can share with you through the pictures. Emotion by touch of Kira fashion clothes, who kindly accommodate us. And eventually emotions by scents and flavours of our Primopasso buffet. The king is bread in its forms and shape, thanks to my true friend Franco, who came from Sicily with a load of our fresh unique bread expecially for the event. And our chef Federico, also came from our location in Sicily to support this venture and add his cousine touch to the place. Thanks to everyone who attented ad I hope more of you will attend. As I said to the ones present there, we are sharing with you the flavours and scents of a region, Syracuse and its people. More to come soon. For now Cheers!
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!
Primo Passo 
