When I first arrived in Lipnica Wielka, I was shocked one morning at the small grocer’s in front of the teachers’ housing to see how much bread the women in front of me were buying. It solved a mystery, though. I’d discovered that if I arrived too late, sometimes simply in the mid-morning hours, there was no bread to be found.

“Nie ma” was the curt reply.

Standing in line that morning, though, seeing woman after woman buy two, three, sometimes four loaves of bread, I understood why. It wasn’t until I saw the same woman buy the same amount the next day that I realized her family ate that much bread in a single day.

The loaves themselves looked like nothing I’d ever seen for sale in grocery stores. I knew you could get stuff like that — hard and crusty on the outside, thick and hearty on the inside — at bakeries and such specialty stores, but in a regular Food Lion or Kroger?

When K and I first moved to the States, finding a good source for good bread was of primary grocery-shopping importance. Who knew we had a source right there?