Łemkowie (Lemkos)
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Kieselycia a taste that every Lemko knows

Not only the mountain people, but the people in general, diversify their daily diet with a number of plant products that nature gives them, without any efforts on their part. Mushrooms and berries were picked to diversify the dishes in and around Komańcza. Lemkos were collecting hryby, sośniaky, rams rohy, pidpeńky, lichens (small yellow mushrooms). In Wola Michowa chrysanthemums, Cossacks. They were dried or freshly baked in butter, stewed with cream as an addition to potatoes (lard). Strawberries were harvested from the berries - blueberries, raspberries and blackberries - blackberries.
The daily food consisted mainly of plant foods and dairy products. Meat was eaten rarely and on special occasions. In Komańcza, people were eaten at 7 o'clock - “cabbage, pyrohy, hunks, bandurkas, mołoko, chlib, cheesy. South: cabbage, bandurky, pyncaky. On the dish: łemesz (potato soup), mołokom bandurky, kysełycu, borscht, bib, cabbage variants. In posti bib, horoch ”.
Salads were also prepared, for example chopped boiled cabbage, covered with rye or vinegar. Boiled loboda was fried with butter. When they went out into the field, the first time they ate rice with milk and roulades (flour that was bought in a store mixed in boiling water with pieces of bacon or meat). Roulades were also eaten at weddings or baptisms. During the fast, the dishes were prepared in linseed oil. People drank rye, barley or buy coffee. “On the thirst” people drank beetroot borscht or oat bread (dried, sour, and drunk). Also whey, sheep rye. In addition, water and milk were drunk, as well as beer, rum and vodka.
The most "known" Lemko dish is kieselycia - white, thick, fasting sour rye soup made of oat flour: Kiselicatosie is called sour rye soup in Polish. It ground the oats, and the oats were so tiny, yellow. The oats were ground to a fine and you gave a little leaven from the bread and this flour, you didn't need much for a pot - three tablespoons, four spoons, and it was done. And then you could use garlic, allspice, and the leaven poured out and he cooked so that it wouldn't overcook, but puffed. Same as sour rye soup, but you could still get cumin for it. It smelled so good. The food was simple, with few ingredients, usually fasting.

The Lemkos do not have a cookbook, but many websites deal with this topic:
In Lemko cuisine - recipes
In search of Lemko cuisine
Lemko cuisine. What is worth knowing about it?

A lot of rennet cheeses were produced in Lemko families, the tradition of their production dates back to the Wallachian expansion and their location of villages. The fact of their production in villages established under the Wallachian law is confirmed in tributes. Well, for example, in the Historical and Geographical Dictionary of Polish Lands in the Middle Ages, we read in the location privilege of Komańcza from 1512 that "every peasant who is free after 24 years should (...) give Wallachian cheese (...)". Roman Reinfuss wrote about the shepherd's economy, which "brought the Lemkos two wool shears, a large amount of cheese and sheep cheese, and by fertilizing the pastures, they significantly increased their productivity." The author claimed that “(...) the milk of sheep and cows after each milking was taken to the village for further appropriate processing. The shredded cheese, drained through a linen cloth, was called bundz or clack cheese. It was kneaded with hands, the size of a large goose egg, which they dried in the oven or crushed into a wooden vessel, salted and loaded with a board with stone to prepare sheep cheese. The hrudas baked until golden brown were placed on a shelf. The remaining whey was cooked and so was the urda. ' Today, the production is kept mainly in shepherd's huts by highlanders from Podhale. At home, housewives usually make cottage cheese. This state of affairs is mainly related to the ever poorer subsistence farming of dairy cattle.

The text comes from the study "INVENTORY OF CULTURAL RESOURCES OF THE BORDERLAND - THE ETHNOCARPATHIA PROJECT" realized by the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University for the District Museum in Rzeszów.

Author: Mrs. Marta Graban-Butryn .

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