Slate.com has had a continuing discussion in letters-format about the
Sopranos. (Not sure how long they've done this; I've been reading only this
season.) Brian Williams (yes, the TV news anchorman) has been participating
lately.

In an earlier post, Williams mentioned that the Lincoln Log sandwich on last
Sunday's The Sopranos brought back memories for him. Timothy Noah (one of
the other correspondents) asked what it was and went into a funny riff with
speculation about the symbolism of the sandwich. I recommend Sopranos fans
read the whole set of posts -- it's good stuff.

At any rate, here's Williams on the Lincoln Log sandwich in particular and
the food of his childhood in North Jersey in general (warning--there's a
small plot spoiler at the end):

"...Would that my mother were here to defend herself. She went to her reward
years ago, and with her went the Lincoln Log recipe. During what has been a
painful day of culinary reminiscence on my part, all I can recall were Oscar
Mayer "frankfurters" (as my dad still calls them, I believe in deference to
the Supreme Court justice) split suggestively down the middle (I never
watched that part, because as with lobsters, I was never really sure they
were dead) and then slathered-in our version-lengthwise in mayonnaise. I
know. How do you think I feel? That was my life in north Jersey. They made
for a handy, portable heart attack on a bun. Enough aggressively bad food in
a fist-size package to give the eater/victim instant angina (and this was
years before he got voted off American Idol) if not worse. I remember we had
to get a certain kind of bun-the Pepperidge Farm "New England cut"-so that
when splayed open it presented more like a double-thickness slab of Wonder
Bread. On the dog would go copious amounts of mayo-and in some houses, cream
cheese. Always Breakstone's. My mom later developed some tsoris over the
quality of the Oscar Mayers, so we switched to Hebrew Nationals.

"Message: We didn't eat well. We enjoyed aerosol cheese, and served it to
guests with Triscuits. My mother once took a vacuum pouch of Carl Buddig
thin-sliced turkeylike lunch meat; flattened the watery, gooey, scattershot
sheets as a "steak"; and warmed the mass in a frying pan. It was served,
this flattened collection of 15-or-so slices in pretend solid form, as
"we're having turkey!" Yes, it was bad in the kitchen where I grew up ...
and not exactly flush with cash ... or cooking skills. So does anyone blame
me somehow for not remembering each pinch in the recipe for Lincoln Logs? I
merely remember they never seemed time-sensitive. They were better than the
sandwiches my mother sometimes packed for my school lunch: butter, sprinkled
with sugar, on white bread. Oh ... and she always used to gently take the
dull point of a pencil and draw a heart in my banana, just to optimize the
chance that the guys on the football team would go all Coco on me during
recess."

Anny