American as pizza pie
The other day I used “veep” while playing Words with Friends and the computerized game accepted it. It was worth over 30 points because I hit the V on a triple letter tile. I would have never of come up with the word had it not been for the television show, “Veep.” Thank you, Julia Louis Dreyfus.
I know I’ve never used qi, xi, or za in a sentence, but I use them in Scrabble all of the time. One day last week, I decided to look those words up in the dictionary. While qat and xi have esoteric origins, I was surprised to learn that za was slang for pizza.
I eat pizza. Matter of fact, I had some on the Fourth of July. What’s more American than pizza?
Sure, a lot more of you eat hot dogs and hamburgers on Independence Day, but both hot dogs and hamburgers came over from Germany. I’ll stick with pizza.
Pizza in some form or another has been around since the 10th century. The ancient Greeks covered their bread with oils, herbs and cheese. The Romans made a similar dish with a sheet of dough topped with cheese and honey and flavored with bay leaves.
The legend goes that a pizza covered in tomatoes, cheese and basil, standing in for the red, white and green of the Italian flag, was made for Queen Margherita. Hence the very popular Margherita pizza was born.
My nana used to tell a story from her childhood. When she was a little girl playing with a friend, she was called to dinner.
Her friend asked, “What are you having?”
She said, “Pizza.”
Her friend said, “What’s that?”
My nana replied, “It’s sort of like bread with tomato sauce and cheese on it.”
Her friend winced, and told her, “That sounds disgusting.”
Imagine.
It was one of only two stories my nana used to tell from her early years. The other involved my Uncle Benny, who jumped off or was pushed off the roof of a barn. Something about either being dressed as Superman, or building an airplane from scrap wood in the yard. I don’t really remember. I liked the pizza story better because no one was injured.
But I digress, like I do. I really wanted to write a new ending to that pizza story. I wanted to see this little neighbor girl have her comeuppance. Sometime in her life, she had to have tried pizza and said, “Well, what do you know … this is delicious.”
It’s true that pizza, while being sold in New York’s Little Italy since 1905, didn’t really gain popularity until after World War II. So I don’t doubt the validity of the story. My Aunt Terri told me that in the mid- to late ’90s she met a woman from Kentucky who never heard of lasagna. Apparently, they don’t have Garfield comics in Kentucky.
While I will probably always eat pizza, I don’t think I will ever call it za; unless I’m playing Scrabble.