"missy chase lapine" news and stories

We told you recently about the controversy surrounding Jessica Seinfeld's Deceptively Delicous cookbook and how some people think it's a lot like another hide-veggies-in-your-kids-food tome, Missy Chase Lapine's The Sneaky Chef. Now hubby Jerry has spoken out on the subject.

He appeared on The Late Show With David Letterman last night, and besides talking about his new movie about bees, he brought up the controversy. Besides telling Letterman that it's ridiculous that his wife would do anything like steal cooking ideas, he also called Lapine a "wacko" and said that you have to look out for people who use three names because they often turn out to be assassins. No word from Lapine yet.

Meanwhile, Slate thinks both cookbooks aren't worth much, but similarities don't equal plagiarism.

I watched the episode of Oprah a few weeks ago that had Jerry Seinfeld's wife Jessica, talking about her new get-your-kids-to-eat cookbook Deceptively Delicious. Basically, she purees up the good stuff her kids should be eating (broccoli, cauliflower, other veggies) and secretly puts them inside foods that her kids really love (chicken fingers, chocolate chip cookies, etc). But is this a new thing?

I ask this because I had heard about doing something similar, and a woman who wrote and published another cookbook is wondering if the two projects are too similar. Missy Chase Lapine, author of The Sneaky Chef (published in April by Running Press), says that her publicists pitched the idea to Oprah five times with no luck, and then six months later Jessica Seinfeld is on the show with her cookbook doing very similar recipes and cooking tips, and that Oprah it was being "touted as an entirely new technique."