I encourage you to make your own wonderful smoked meats according to old and forgotten recipes. Minimum ingredients - maximum taste Who am I? When I was young, I liked to visit my uncle, who was famous in his village for creating the best cold cuts. I remember that they slaughtered pigs, heifers, sometimes lambs, kings and poultry. Twice a year, so that the village had meat for the holiday tables. My aunt would make notes in a thick green notebook with a creaking pen, collect orders from the entire village and hamlets for these uncle's products. In the wooden attic, colorful bouquets of herbs tied with string were drying, the smell of which could be felt from afar. It seemed like magic to me how my uncle and I weighed herbs and spices crushed in a stone mortar, the names of which I could not remember, and how they mixed them with fresh or dried meat. I remember the smell of an old smokehouse, beechwood shavings, juniper branches, lumps of grey salt and black grains of hot pepper. And then I grew up. I travelled around the world a bit, from each trip, from every corner of the continent I brought back not souvenirs for tourists, but colourful spices and regional recipes for meat products, looking everywhere for the flavours of my old childhood. I work in a butcher's shop, the best in our area. I opened it out of my love of good food. It's a real manufacture. Small, I prepare the products there myself. That's how Stara Wędliniarnia came into being, where I practice the noble craft of my ancestors. Butchering is my profession, but also my passion, something that fills a large space of my life and heart. In shops, unlike when I was a child, shelves full of meat and cold cuts, but when you have to choose something, it's hard, because everything is the same; supposedly it should be tasty, but it isn't. Supposedly it should be healthy, but it shines in the fridge. And I missed the peace of a small village in southeastern Poland, interrupted only by the roar of cows in the pasture, the buzzing of insects, the barking of dogs, the smells and tastes of a family home, the meaty, hearty feasts at my uncle's. And although my relatives had long since passed away, and not a stone was left of their house and smokehouse, I tried to recreate family recipes. In surviving letters, written by my aunt to her cousin from near Lviv, I found descriptions of herbs and a few recipes in beautiful pre-war calligraphy. Based on them, I tried for months to recreate the remembered tastes. And memories began to come alive. It soon turned out that there were more lovers of old tastes. That's when Stara Wędliniarnia was established. Travelling around Poland and Europe, I started talking to people, people from small villages, old people, people who didn't buy meats in butchers' shops, but made them themselves. I collected recipes, family recipes passed down from generation to generation. I still do it. And when the butcher shop empties, my colleagues return home, I - a bit of a loner, definitely an original - give myself over to my passion. I turn on music with the sounds of nature and in harmony with nature I make my cold cuts. Cold cuts like they used to be made from meat of known origin, from small rural farms, where animals are not fed artificial feed, not fattened with mixtures, not kept in tight boxes, where, before they reach the tables, they live as they did in the good times before mass food production. I prepare fresh, healthy meat without chemicals, I add high-quality spices and herbs from the Podkarpacie and Podlasie meadows and forests, I put aromatic wood in the smokehouse. I grind, balance the proportions, measure the ingredients, season, bake, fry, cook, smoke... And then the fruits of my passion, the effort of my hands, the breath of my heart... reach your tables. Help yourselves! Cheers!