When I was a kid, I used to love talking to my father about our relatives in Italy. My dad always had a special place in his heart and a keen recollection of spending hours with his Uncle Angelo. Uncle Angelo came to the U.S. from Calabria on a boat and would spend summers in the Bronx with our family. A boat.
Dad loved telling stories about Uncle Angelo. How they would make wine by squishing the grapes with their feet. He would explain my great uncle’s intricate process of jarring homemade sauce. How he sealed the jars perfectly and methodically, so that the sauce would stay preserved for a long time. Minimal ingredients, plenty of love and always fresh.
But, what I always found fascinating was that Uncle Angelo knew how to make soap. Soap? As a kid, hearing that was baffling. You can make soap? Dad said he would use oils and lye. The real way to make soap. Whats lye,* I thought.
I have no idea what his recipe was, but I suppose he used olive oil, maybe lard or tallow and lye. Not sure if he scented it. Talk about a self sustaining lifestyle.
When I think about our soap making journey, I guess maybe some of it's in our DNA. The idea behind Hunt & Lather was to make all natural cold process soap with no chemicals and create a brand specifically for for men who hunt and fish. Why not make soap like our ancestors did? Back to basics. All natural products with history and values, that perform really well too.
I feel like uncle Angelo would be proud of Hunt & Lather and I bet he’d love our soap. I think he’d like my sauce too. Hunt & Lather is a brand with family values and principles in mind. We make products that we trust, and use too. Old school. The real way. The best way.
*Lye is sodium hydroxide (NaOH), or aka caustic soda. When it’s combined with oils, a chemical reaction called saponification occurs and soap is made.
