Pizza Strip; Groundhog Day, part II

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PIZZA STRIP

   "Pizza strip," like "snail salad," is another Rhode Island dish that was left off of that November NEW YORK TIMES article.  "Pizza strips" are mentioned in John Mariani's ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN FOOD AND DRINK and there are quite a few Google hits, but no hits in NEW YORK TIMES full text.
   From the DOW JONES database:


R.I. history a lively experiment
DICK MARTIN Special to the Journal
03/05/1999
The Providence Journal
NORTH WEST
C-04
 (...)
"My introduction to Rhode Island was unique," she explained."I was uprooted and transplanted...I had never eaten garlic and had no idea what a pizza strip was. I really wasn't in Kansas anymore, but I thought I was fully prepared to take up residence with Yankees."


   This is from a long thread on "pizza strips" and other parts of RI cuisine on "alt.rhode island" in Google Groups.  The web site that's cited is very good:


Message 5 in thread
From: gouberette (gouberette at nospamcox.net)
Subject: Re: Pizza Strips?
Newsgroups: alt.rhode_island
Date: 2002-08-27 10:23:58 PST

> Clear chowdah?  Is that like the red kind?  And what'r' Dynamites?!

        No there is red, white and clear. All very tasty. Dynamites are a
Woonsocket thing, Kinda like a sloppy Joe but spicy and they got extra
things in them. I never knew there was a such thing  till a huge  get
together we had here this summer, someone brought it. two crock pots of it.
One kinda spicy and the other was flame throwing hot. You put it ona torpedo
roll. Make sure you have lots of napkins and something really cold and
refreshing to wash it down with...
Definatly a rhode Island thing.

Heather


"Fishface" <fishface at drift.net> wrote in message
news:ummvegeogk9l6f at corp.supernews.com...
> Christopher Martin wrote:
> > Fishface <fishface at drift.net> wrote:
> >
> > > Anyone know which bakery that might be?
> >
> > Oh good, a chance to shamelessly plug my website!  Go to
> > <http://www.quahog.org/cuisine.php> and scroll down to pizza strips.
> >
> > Sorry I don't have a recipe handy, but if you call one of these places,
> > they might be willing to give one to you.
> >
> > By the way, my preference is for Crugnale -- soft moist crust, plenty
> > of sauce, not chewy.
>
> Great, but none of those bakeries rings the bell of familiarity...
>
> Clear chowdah?  Is that like the red kind?  And what'r' Dynamites?!
>
> I would seriously injure or maim for a Steak & Cheese from D'Angelo's.
> At least the ones I remember...  Hot oven grinders are virtually unknown
> here.  And donut shops can only be described as "scarce".
>
> FF

---------------------------------------------------------------
GROUNDHOG DAY

   The movie GROUNDHOG DAY didn't have a sequel.
   From the DOW JONES publications database today:


A hot dog or a dog-shaped sausage?
02/03/2003
The Korea Herald
(c) 2003 The Korea Herald

America fast became the major producer of hot dogs: 16.5 billion are turned out each year, or about 75 hot dogs for every man, woman or child in the country. This is what Charles Panati says in his "Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things" (1987). This figure breaks down to a daily average of over 45 million hot dogs, far more than what I said in my "lie" here last week. Americans eat dogs by the million every day, but they never eat one unless it is hot, hence the name "hot dog." Strictly speaking, however, it must be pointed out that, within a given period of time, the amount of anything produced would not necessarily coincide with the actual amount of it consumed. This would give rise to three situations, that is, the supply tallies with the demand, or either exceeds the other. A hot dog may also be a favorite food for a dog, as it is for many of us humans. But a hot dog does not contain any portion of what it is named after. Why is it so called, then? Only the name, "hot dog," has its origin in the name of a dachshund, a long-bodied and short-legged German dog, according to Panati, the "foremost specialist on everything" (so described by the publisher of his book above). Called by a variety of names, such as franks, wieners, red hots and dachshund sausages, and actually curve-shaped like the body of a dachshund, the frankfurter sausage originated in Frankfurt, Germany, in the 1850s. A butcher, who had a very popular pet dachshund, thought that a sausage shaped like his pet would win the hearts of Frankfurters, and he was right. But it was not until the 1880s that the frankfurter sausage followed German immigrants to the New World, where, at first, they were sold on pushcarts along rustic dirty trails. In the 1900s, the slender streamlined sausage was still something of a novelty in America, although it had already become a familiar food at New York City baseball games, for example. At the bleachers, the vendors would bellow, "Get your red-hot dachshund sausages!" What took place at the Polo Grounds, the home
 of the New York Giants, in 1906 marked a turning point for the hot-dog industry in America. Thomas Aloysius Dorgan (a.k.a. Tad Dorgan), the famous syndicated Hearst newspaper cartoonist, happened to be in the stands and, inspired by the barking calls of the vendors, sketched a cartoon of a dachshund. Back at his office, he refined the cartoon, but, unable to spell "dachshund," he opted for "dog" to caption it with a simpler version, "Get your hot dog." The name stuck, although historians, arch-ivists and curators of cartoon museums have tried in vain to date to locate the verifying cartoon, Panati says.In English, besides hot dog, we find other similar novelties - "cocktail," for example. Under normal circumstances, who would drink the tail of a cock? I have tried in my own way to track down the origin of this word, but in vain. In the course of my search and research on the origin of the word cocktail, I have come across the "Sekai Sake Daijiten" (1995), a magnum opus by Yasuyuki Ina of Japan, who, by any standards, is a great authority in his field. As possible origins of cocktail, Ina gives seven sources, none of which, as he himself admits, sounds plausible enough to introduce here, I would say. His book is otherwise encyclopedic of almost everything that has to do with alcoholic beverages of the world.Now this: This is a funny world of English. At a party, you could enjoy a "cocktail's tail on the rock" dipped in throat-burning alcohol; it might be a "bloody mary," a "pink lady," or a "blue nun," for example. If you were driving home afterward, however, someone in uniform might want you to pull over to the curbside and blow into a plastic tube. According to what Richard Lederer says in his "The Bride of Anguished English: A Bonus of Bloopers, Blunders, Botches, and Boo-Boos" (2000): English is a language not noted for its logic. If adults commit adultery, do infants commit infantry? If olive oil is made from olives, what do they make baby oil from? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian c
onsume? And if "pro" and "con" are opposites, is "progress" the opposite of "congress?"Dr. Park Choon-ho is Distinguished Professor of Law at Pukyung University in Busan, a judge of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and a member of the Institute of International Law. - Ed.