In the couple of years of my making pizza and bread, I’ve watched countless YouTube videos. Many are by NYC pizziolas or take place in NYC Pizzerias. Also, I’ve made about 250 and purchased about 50 from various Pizzerias during this time.
But, as I watched, made, and ate more, I started to get a hankering, a woolee to visit the “Pizza Capital of the US” (Old Forge, PA) and Brooklyn to experience some of their tasty wonders!
Neapolitan Word of the Day
I wondered if “woolee” was a “real” word or just something made up by the Nebelatans (Neapolitan-Americans).
Back when I was a kid, my mother would say something like, “I got the woolee for sausage and peppers” or “I got the woolee for alle olio (pasta with garlic and oil)!” Inherently, I understood that she meant the she had a “taste”, a desire, for such food.
So, I asked Google “what is the italian word for wanting something that sounds like woolee?” NOTHING, ZERO, ZIP, NADA.
What I did find was a reference to Jim Bouton’s famous 1970’s baseball book “Ball Four” which used the term wool a lot. When I was a kid, I had no idea what he was talking about…wool? If you don’t, grab a copy of the book!
So, I searched out that large bastion of truth, Facebook. I found this: https://www.facebook.com/italianslang/posts/the-italian-american-slang-word-of-the-day-with-stevie-b-vogliavoglia-woo-lee-cr/828011997235520/
Ah, voglia! Like the phase “Ti Voglia Bene” which loosely translates to “I GREATLY LONG FOR YOU.”
Voglia and woolee, they sound alike?!
As is normal, I either heard my mom wrong with the W versus the V, or the Ashtabula Nebelatans changed it, or…who knows? AND OF COURSE, THE NEBELATANS DROPPED THE A AT THE END! As I’ve mentioned in the past, when you live next to an active volcano, one needs to be efficient, even with words by cutting out needless letters.
My next post will be about that visit to Old Forge and Brooklyn “fix my woolee”!
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