"You eat small bread?"

"You eat small bread?" A. asked me today.

"Well, I eat less bread."

"Yes," she responded "you eat... small bread."

We did not eat a lot of bread in my house growing up.  There was bread in the house, usually a loaf of dark, whole wheat bread that my dad would use to make lunches for my sister and I, but we were not a family that ate bread with every meal.  On television I would see families sitting around the table with a "bread plate" where a roll or a couple slices of white bread would be placed.  My family was not a bread plate family.  In addition to the loaf of wheat bread, which often went moldy before my family of four could finish it, there was the occasional loaf of garlic bread for special occasions, or the cinnamon rolls on a sunday morning when my older sister learned about Pillsbury dough rolls.

In Serbia and Bosnia, where there is a bakery every fifteen feet and where bread is eaten at every meal... not infrequently is the only food item in at least one meal per day.... the idea that I do not eat bread is unfathomable.  I do, in fact, eat bread.  Occasionally I crave a pain au chocolate or a grilled cheese sandwich.  I love corn bread and banana bread.  But I will go for days, a week or more, without eating bread.  This makes me an oddity here.  

When I first arrived in the region I tried to adjust, recognizing that food is central to culture and to cross cultural understanding.  To learn about my new home, to form ties, I must sit down to meals and adopt new eating habits.  I traded my rice for bread.  But there are things the body refuses to learn.  My body simply does not like, want, or accept a daily intake of bread. 

My "hippie" (as friends have termed my parents, much to my parents' amusement) low meat, low bread, upbringing did not prepare me for the meat, cheese, and bread diet of the western Balkans.  And so I have adopted a compromise.  I will eat the fatty sausages, the flat breads, raised breads, sweet pastries at gatherings or when offered at someone's home, but only in small quantities. 

But at work, I still politely decline the offer of jam slathered rolls.  

"You diet?"

"No, I just do not eat a lot of bread."

"I diet once, eat small bread, lost 8 kilos.  Maybe you lose 8 kilos."

Welcome to the former Yugoslavia. 

*as a note, I am not making fun of others' english when I type it as spoken, you should hear my Bosnian.... boze!