Well, it was a lame attempt to be funny with the title. For those Seinfeld fans, you probably remember the line from Puddy to Elaine, “You stole my Jesus fish.”
Anyway, I thought it was interesting that Jessica Seinfeld is being accused of stealing recipes from Missy Chase Lapine.
The quick snapshot of the issue is:
- Lapine wrote a cookbook on how to “sneak” vegetables into foods that your child likes to eat. There’s something about spinach brownies (not sure how I feel about that) and something being pureed and added to mac & cheese. There are 15 recipes that are apparently, almost identical to Lapine’s recipes in Jessica Seinfeld’s book.
- Her book was released in April while Jessica Seinfeld’s was released this month.
- Lapine had submitted her book to HarperCollins, but was denied by them. HarperCollins then published Seinfeld’s book.
- The comparisons started after Jessica Seinfeld went on Oprah to promote her book.
Interesting. I don’t know what to think to be honest.
My question is if it’s true, will Oprah bring Jessica Seinfeld back on her show to talk about it, like she did to James Frey?
**Update: here are my latest postings on the situation here, here, and here.**
**Update 11/19/07: I wrote a new blog posting on Jessica Seinfeld.**
** Update 1/8/08: Info on the lawsuit can be found here.**
**Update 2/26 — Seinfelds respond and want lawsuit dropped.**
October 27, 2007 at 12:18 pm
I find it hard to trust anyone that leaves a two month marriage to start dating a major celebrity. Great teacher.
October 27, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Yeah…talk about family “values.”
January 7, 2008 at 9:53 pm
I found the story hard to believe when I saw it on Oprah. I thought this woman has to be some kind of genius to just come up with this. Missy Lapine has a credible background and researched her recipes for 5 years. I believe her.
Neither Jerry nor Jessica are talented, it seems.
January 12, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Wow, I have the Lapine cookbook and when I saw Jessica Seinfeld on Oprah I was very surprised by what certainly seemed like the same concept with a very similar delivery and feel to it. I think there should be a lot of latitude with regard to broad ideas used in different ways but this is clearly a case of plagarism. If Seinfeld or the publishers claim to have been unaware of the existence of the previous Lapine publication then shame on them for bad research/fact checking etc. Now that she has appeared on and was boisterously endorsed by Oprah, I wonder if she will get the same overzealous shaming and finger shaking James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces got for fictionalizing portions of his autobiography. I doubt it, even though I think plagarizing warrants far more criticism than exaggerating.