Flash in the Pan

I truly get tired of people with an axe to grind - generally either the subject of a story or some friend or PR person - anonymously replying to blogs, generally with a tone and a relationaship of convenience with various facts that suggest their biases. Come on, folks - if you're going to be a partisan, have the small amount of resiliance to sign your opinions. Otherwise, I (and others like me) are probably going to take what you write and mock your efforts - as I am about to do here.

It was so sad to see mean Jerry go on TV to try to salvage Jessica's reputation. What are the facts:

Sure, he should have kept out of it, but it's his wife. Can you imagine the grief he would have faced if he said, "You know, dear, I think it makes sense for me to stay uninvolved." As for the "facts," I'm guessing from this opening that I'm about to see a carefully chosen recitation of convenient bits of information.

Chef and baby-products mogul Missy Chase Lapine came out in April with a book, “The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids’ Favorite Meals.” Lapine baked her spinach brownies with Al Roker on the “Today” show; Seinfeld shared her spinach brownies with Oprah on that show last week.

How did I know? If you're going to mention who came first, why not mention the book or two on this various subject that came out before 2007? How about that recipes for brownies with spinach started showing up on the web at least in January of 2006? Oh, wait, that might suggest neither author was all that original.

Mothers on Oprah.com and parenting sites have noted similarities after perusing the puree-spattered pages of both. Some wondered whether the wealthy Seinfeld didn’t have cooks who helped cook up her recipes.

Oh, dear, mothers on Oprah.com - could they have been anonymous posters related to this one? Maybe Lapine found recipes on the web or in the books that were already in print before hers. Any interest in doing some comparisons there? No, I didn't think so.

Seinfeld writes about having an epiphany that, “While I was cooking dinner, pureeing butternut squash for the baby and making mac and cheese for the rest of us, I had the crazy idea of stirring a little of the puree into the macaroni. … The colors matched -you couldn’t really see the squash in there -and the texture was perfect.”

Lapine, who founded the Baby Spa natural products line, writes: “If you want to hide something in macaroni and cheese, you have to match the color of the dish. You could easily introduce white bean puree in the mac and cheese.”

And how could you expect that anyone might think of matching colors? Just because peopel have been doing things like this for, oh, DECADES.

Seinfeld and Lapine both have recipes for mashed potatoes with hidden cauliflower, grilled cheese with secret sweet potatoes, green eggs made with pureed baby spinach, and carrot-laced tacos.

For three out of these four, I was able to find something on the web showing that neither book could have been the original of the concept:

• Mashed potatoes with cauliflower (2002)



• Green eggs with pureed spinach (2000)



• Carrot-laced tacos (2007, but apparently a tradition in Mexico)

And I'll bet, with a bit more time, I could find sweet potatoes in a grilled cheese sandwich.

Lapine stayed hidden herself when we called, but Craig Herman, an executive at her publisher, Running Press, said ominously: “I won’t be able to comment until next week.”

Sorry, but isn't it plagiarism to quote something without indicating the source? Or does that only count for cookbooks? (I couldn't make heads or tails of what this "fact" was supposed to mean).

Let's just look at the facts. And, if I was Ms. Lapine, I would certainly challange Jerry for his slanderous comments.

Still waiting for those facts that prove this to be plagiarism. And I'm sure you can challenge Jerry (didn't know you were on a first name basis) - anonymously, of course.

Labels: Jessica Seinfeld, Missy Chase Lapine, plagiarism