Sheldon wrote:

> Growing up in Broklyn I remember pizzagaina being a very common way to
> use all the weekend's leftovers to make lunches for bringing to work/
> school during the week. There is no exact recipe, it's to clean the
> fridge of whatever is left over. Each morning walking to school I
> used to get offered more than I could possibly eat from the kids who
> had pizzagaina for lunch, they were embarrassed to eat it in public
> because of how it stigmatized one as a dirt poor WOP... hey, never
> bothered me, they were so good, better than my mom's bologna
> sammiches, so of course I'd trade. The last 'a' is silent, so it took
> me a long time before realizing it wasn't "pizza again". Hey, I was
> only seven years old, I wasn't such a wisaguy then... but still, if
> you were a teacher you didn't want me in your class.
>
My father told of his High School years (Oyster Bay High School, Oyster
Bay, LI) and that the Italian kids always brought leftover fried pepper,
onion and perhaps fried potato sandwiches. They would be wrapped up in
waxed paper, and in a brown lunch bag. By lunch time the oil spots
always appeared on the brown bag which made it obvious as to what was
inside. Some were embarrassed by those peasant sandwiches...when the
American kids had store bought wonderbread and bologna or something
similiar. Nowadays I would take that Italian lunch ANY day over
wonderbread and coldcuts, wouldn't you?
I hadn't thought of pizzagaina in years!("pizzachain" it always sounded
to me as a kid) Now I wish I could have some and can't make it this
weekend either, darn it.