Madonna and A-Rod met for quite the secret tryst, according to Page Six. The two helicoptered – separately – to Madge’s good friends Jerry and Jessica Seinfelds’ place for some alone time recently. Why the separate helicopters? Well because nothing says, “We’re not doing anything wrong” like two choppers loudly landing at the same location half an hour apart. Clearly Madge places a great importance on the appearance of propriety.

IT was like a scene out of a James Bond movie last week, as Madonna and Alex Rodriguez secretly jetted off in two private helicopters for a quick and cozy rendezvous in the Hamptons, Page Six has learned. Instead of booking a motel room, the two headed straight to Jerry Seinfeld’s waterfront mansion, where they relaxed in luxury for several hours.

“The Seinfelds have been friends with Madonna for years. They’re neighbors on the West Side, so it’s really no surprise,” said an insider. “And Jerry and [wife] Jessica go to her concerts whenever she’s in town.” Our spies say the clandestine East End meeting between soon-to-be-divorced Madge and freshly single A-Rod occurred on Oct. 21. A chopper carrying the Yankee slugger was seen landing in East Hampton, where he was picked up in a white Porsche 911 matching the description of Jessica’s car.

Less than 40 minutes later, another helicopter that took off from Chelsea Piers with Madonna aboard landed at the same airstrip. “A dark SUV and Jerry in another Porsche both pulled up and picked up Madonna and they headed back to Jerry’s place,” a witness told us. “When they arrived at the Seinfeld home, Madonna poked her head out the window and could be clearly seen.”

It’s not known what the Bronx Bomber, 33, and the Material Mom, 50 - who insist they are just friends - did during their stay at Seinfeld’s 12-acre spread. “About four hours later, the dark SUV left the house and took them all back to the airport. Madonna and the Seinfelds could clearly be seen getting out and piling into the copter that had taken Madonna there in the first place. They left together,” our witness said. “Several minutes later, the helicopter that carried A-Rod also left.”

[From Page Six]

I love the line about “It’s not known what [they] did during their stay.” Yeah I don’t want to visualize it either, but I’m guessing I could probably come up with a few generic basics if push came to shove. What would be even more horrifying is if Page Six did know what Madonna and Alex did during their stay.

A-Rod is clearly incredibly into Madonna. I don’t totally understand it… or even slightly understand it, to be honest. But he’s showering her with gifts. Star says he’s given her a 22-karat-gold bracelet that says bashert, which is Yiddish for “meant to be.” In Touch calls him the “Anti-Guy” pointing out that he’s also bought Madge a Louis Vuitton purse, a pink cocktail ring worth $2,600 and a $8,500 chunky gold necklace. Since it seems like nearly every detail of their lives is already known; they might as well step out publicly together at this point.

Here’s Alex Rodriguez leaving the Reebok Gym in New York City the day after his tryst with Madonna. Photographer: Ray Filmano. Images thanks to WENN. Header of Madonna leaving Kabbalah on October 1st. Images thanks to Fame.

Humor is one of those things that is totally subjective and completely open for debate. A lot of people think that in order for something to be truly funny, it has to be risky or offensive. And while I don’t agree with that, safe humor is never quite as good as the jokes that walk a much finer line.

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld seems to really be straddling that line lately. Over the last year he and wife Jessica have been embroiled in a heated legal battle over a cookbook, Deceptively Delicious, that Jessica appears to have blatantly plagiarized from author Missy Chase Lapine’s The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids’ Favourite Meal. Lapine has sued the Seinfields – but not just for plagiarism.

Though at the time she hadn’t made a single comment about the whole debacle, Seinfeld thought it appropriate to mock her mercilessly on late night television and make Lapine out to be some sort of whackjob; making some stupid joke that, “If you read history, many of the three-name people do become assassins.” In addition to the ideas and the recipes, Celebitchy pointed out that Jessica also stole some of the “personal” stories from Chase Lapine’s book.

The Seinfelds are also being sued for slander, and are using just about the stupidest defense strategy I’ve ever heard of.

Jerry Seinfeld insisted yesterday he ought to be the master of his own comic domain. Seinfeld didn’t slander the woman who accused his wife of ripping off her cookbook, he said in legal papers filed yesterday in Manhattan federal court. He was just mining the legal system for laughs - and supporting the right of standup comedians to do the same, he said.

Seinfeld cited several episodes of the “show about nothing” where he mocked frivolous lawsuits - including an episode where Kramer wins free coffee for life in a court settlement because he got burned on gourmet roast. His lawyers, who are trying to get the defamation suit against him tossed, pointed out that his flick “Bee Movie” also has a plot that revolved around a silly suit.

In the movie, a bumblebee voiced by the comic sues honey manufacturers for exploiting bees. And rock star Sting is hauled in as a witness. Seinfeld was hit with the slander suit because he called author Missy Chase Lapine, who claims his wife, Jessica, copied her cookbook, a “wacko” and “mentally unhinged celebrity stalker” on David Letterman’s show. Lapine, author of “Sneaky Chef,” is suing Jessica, too. Lawyers for Seinfeld insisted his suit is no joke - because the First Amendment protects humor. And the attorneys said allowing Lapine’s suit to go forward would make it impossible for other comedians to get laughs out of lawsuits.

[From the New York Post]

First off, the utterly ridiculous ideas from your not-all-that-funny-after-all show don’t actually hold any ground in the court of law. And while free speech should be protected, there are also slander laws for a reason, and Ms. Lapine is in no way treading over Seinfeld’s free speech by insisting that he not needlessly attack her.

Missy Chase Lapine would look like the victim here no matter what. But it’s truly shocking to see the way the Seinfelds have come after her. Jessica stole the idea for her book. Then instead of apologizing or doing whatever version of “making it right” she could think of, her husband goes on national television to tell the world that Lapine is crazy. Again, keep in mind that although other people had made a lot of comments about the two books at this point, Missy Chase Lapine had acted with utter decorum and dignity and hadn’t said one single word.

That takes more restraint than most people could ever summon. So it’s not as though the Seinfelds were defending themselves or responding to anything Lapine had ever said. They were just using this poor woman – who they’d already taken advantage of in a terrible way – to try to get a few more seconds of publicity (and money) for themselves. Their behavior is utterly disgusting, and calling it a free speech issue degrades true free speech arguments. I hope they lose a ton of money.

Here’s a side-by-side book comparison that Celebitchy did. Header of Jerry and Jessica at the Tribeca Film Festival in April. Images thanks to PR Photos.

Jerry Seinfeld is making a comeback. Insert groan here ________. Thanks. Jerry’s going to be doing another show about nothing, or something close to it. Supposedly it’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” but with Jerry. Which is weird because “Curb Your Enthusiasm” was very much Seinfeld-like but with Larry David, and all the personality quirks and swear words amped up so it was “edgy” and fit for HBO. So essentially these two guys have one idea between them, and they just keep volleying it back and forth. Though we’ve been promised no insane “Bee Movie” promotion, I highly doubt that’ll actually happen, seeing as how yesterday when I was in Midtown Jerry Seinfeld was wandering up and down the sidewalks on 36th Street mumbling “Bee Movie Bee Movie Bee Movie Bee Movie I’m Jerry Seinfeld Bee Movie Bee Movie,” over and over again. But hey, at least this time he wasn’t wearing the costume.

Sources tell PageSix.com that the 53-year-old comedian is in talks for a new series on his old net. The show is being pitched as “just like Curb Your Enthusiasm, but with Jerry, instead of Larry.”

We guess it’s better than a show about nothing!

The series, which is aiming for a June premiere, will be set in New York and will feature Jerry Seinfeld playing himself in an exaggerated reality. The whole thing is a bit confusing for us — if Larry David in Curb was what would have happened had Seinfeld been called Costanza, what happens when Seinfeld goes Curb?

Thank goodness that as we speak, NBC is hiring people to answer these tough questions.

[From Page Six]

Awesome. Because what America really needs is more of this hack. I used to love Jerry Seinfeld until he got married. Why? Because 1) he first met and seduced his wife Jessica while she was on her honeymoon with her first husband and 2) several years later, said wife blatantly plagiarized a whole cookbook and 3) Seinfeld’s reaction to it was to call the plagiarized author, Missy Chase Lapine, a complete whackjob and make fun of her on Letterman even though Lapine had not made or commented publicly on the plagiarizing claims. What a class act.

In related news, Missy Chase Lapine eventually filed a very well-deserved lawsuit against both the Seinfelds – Jessica for plagiarizing the books, and Jerry for slandering her on Letterman – which the Seinfelds recently tried to have thrown out. Jerry claims that he was exaggerating for comedic effect – and while that was possible true, Lapine had done absolutely nothing to deserve being the victim of his barbs. She had at that point been silent while Jessica Seinfeld stole her ideas and made money off them! Interestingly, Jessica Seinfeld has the same literary agent - Jennifer Rudolph Walsh – as another plagiarizing author, Kaavya Viswanathan. Kind of makes you wonder.

Header of the Seinfelds at Madonna’s “A Night to Benefit Raising Malawi and UNICEF” (cough cough fake Kabbalah cult cough). Images thanks to PR Photos.

Update by Celebitchy: NBC and Seinfeld’s rep have both denied this report and say there is no show in the works.

Jessica Seinfeld recently published a book, Deceptively Delicious, about how to sneak healthy foods into your cooking, to fool your kids into eating them. Like muffins with carrots in them. Which works very well if you can get your kid to eat a muffin.

The book was published in October 2007, hot on the heels of another book titled The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids’ Favourite Meals which came out in April. The two books have a few of the same recipies, and The Sneaky Chef aka Missy Chase Lapine has a remarkably similar method for discovering how to add vegetables into mac and cheese.

Jessica Seinfeld’s book plagiarized Lapine’s in concept, cover art - including a similar picture showing hidden carrots - style and structure, according to the lawsuit that seeks unspecified damages.

When Seinfeld appeared on Letterman’s show, he said the books were published at the same time and implied Lapine was a “wacko” and celebrity stalker, comments the suit - filed in Manhattan federal court - described as “false.”

Seinfeld also joked that Lapine accused his wife of “vegetable plagiarism” and poking fun at Lapine’s name and mental condition, including contending that “if you read history, many of the three-name people do become assassins,” before citing John Lennon’s killer Mark David Chapman, the suit said.

The suit said the comedian later told E! News, “this woman is another kind of nut. You know, she thinks she invented vegetables. And she is accusing my wife of stealing her mashed-up carrots.”

Sydney Morning Herald

I checked out the two cover images on Amazon - The Sneaky Chef and Deceptively Delicious are both linked to each other because of their similarities - and I think the ‘hidden carrots’ aren’t really hidden, it’s just that both covers have carrots. What do you think?

I honestly think that it was completely wrong, but I do wonder if Jessica Seinfeld did actually come up with the recipe book concept herself. I have three kids (so does Jessica) that I cook for, and I can tell you right now that in between the cursing and yelling (that’s me) and the crying and naughtiness (that’s them) I am not experimenting in the kitchen. I am basically slopping food on the kids plates before spending three hours making aeroplane noises to get them to eat anything.

Meanwhile, Missy Chase Lapine is a former food magazine editor and creator of a baby goods range.

Recently the books have been criticised for creating poor eating habits. Experts say that hiding vegetables in your kids food means they never acquire the taste of veggies and create good eating habits for adulthood. Also, a little bit of vegetable mixed into the sauce of a dish is going to carry very little of the nutritional value that a whole vegetable would.

This hasn’t stopped anyone buying the books, and I hope that Jessica Seinfeld hands over some of the money she’s made from her book to Missy Lapine. What probably happened is that Jessica’s book was due to be handed in to publishers and she didn’t have enough ideas, so she ‘borrowed’ a few from other sources.

Also, some compensation is due from the Seinfeld couple using their profile to not only sell their book, but also to call Lapine ‘crazy’.

Picture note by Celebitchy: I made the header image, and I see a lot of similarities between those two book covers. Some may be a coincidence, but it’s hardly possible that all the similar recipes are just a coincidence too.

Jessica Seinfeld appeared on The View today, and she answered Barbara Walters question about whether she plagiarized Missy Chase Lapine’s book, The Sneaky Chef, by immediately launching into a diatribe about how people are jealous of the success of her book and “must be looking for cracks” to exploit.

Seinfeld came out with a book called Deceptively Delicious this fall about sneaking vegetables into your kids food by pureeing them up. It was a huge success thanks to Oprah, who featured Seinfeld and her duplicitous recipes on her show this October. Seinfeld has a marketing background and no experience as a chef. Missy Chase Lapine, the author of the earlier book The Sneaky Chef, which is suspiciously similar in both concept and content to Seinfeld’s book, is a chef on the faculty of The New School in NY City

When addressing the plagiarism charge on The View, Seinfeld appeared defensive and annoyed, like she was trying to hold back her feelings. After explaining that people try to cut you down when you’re successful, she quickly added while gesturing wildly with her hands that “I never saw her book, I never saw her recipes.”

Barbara Walters - “There were those who said you copied [the Sneaky Chef] so that must have been very upsetting.”

Jessica Seinfeld - “Well, I can understand why she would have been upset.

You know, first of all when you have a huge success, you know this, people tend to look for the cracks, look for anything that could break you down a little bit. You know there’s always a negative when there’s a positive. This was such an immediate success, this book, that I think that probably people were looking for things to pick apart. But anyway I can understand why she would have been frustrated. She did a book with a similar topic a few months earlier and, you know, it must have been hard to see how quickly my book took off.

(Gestures wildly) I never saw her book, I never saw her recipes nor as a person would I ever do something like I was accused of doing, but you know what ..”

Sheri - “You just got three kids and you were trying to get them to eat their vegetables”

Jessica - “I really didn’t have to do this book, it was something I really wanted to do, and I really wanted… ”

Barbara - “As we said you didn’t exactly need it to feed the family.”

Jessica - “No, we’re doing alright. (Laughs)

[Transcribed from The View video segment available on the Huffington Post and shown below]

So instead of acknowledging Lapine’s case against her, which is incredibly strong, Seinfeld simply said she must be jealous. Her husband responded earlier to the plagiarism allegations in an appearance on David Letterman by calling Lapine a “wacko.”

The two books are not only similar in their idea of getting kids to eat vegetables by working them into foods they will eat, like adding cauliflower to mashed potatoes, they include remarkably similar food combinations and even some suspect wording. The NY Daily News noted how similar the recipes really were:

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.”

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.

[From The NY Daily News]

I’ve already written about this, but there’s no way all those same recipes are a coincidence. One or two might be explained away by similar thinking, but four recipes that are nearly the same?

Jessica Seinfeld told The Wall St. Journal when the allegations first came out that “I’ve never held that book in my hands, and I swear that on my life.” That’s quite different from saying she’s never seen it.

There’s no official lawsuit against Seinfeld yet, but I hope that she gets the pants sued off of her.

Jessica Seinfeld is shown on 11/15/07 at the “7th On Sale” Black Tie Gala, thanks to PR Photos.

Here’s the video, thanks to The Huffington Post:

Jerry Seinfeld hasn’t exactly been ingratiating himself with the writers at Celebitchy lately. First his wife appeared to have plagiarized a lot of her new cookbook from former publisher of Eating Well magazine Missy Chase Lapine. That’s probably not Jerry’s fault, but we’re going to call him guilty by association. Then he mentioned that he spent some time studying Scientology, and talked about its good points. That’s like saying Hell isn’t really all that hot, just comfortably balmy. Finally on Monday night Seinfeld was on Letterman, where he called Lapine “a wacko.” As far as I know, Lapine hadn’t even commented publicly on the controversy at that point – and Seinfeld tried to make it sound like she was the one drumming it up. Considering how blatant the plagiarism appears to be, the Seinfelds should be apologizing right and left, and their publisher should have considered pulling the book in an attempt to avoid litigation. So Jerry Seinfeld has tried to smooth over one of the controversies – though I’m not sure it’s the one he should most apologize for. He explained his Scientology dabbling to “Access Hollywood” and wrote it off, saying he was flittering from one thing to the other at the time.

Among their topics of conversation? The stir Seinfeld recently caused when he revealed he’d dabbled in Scientology. “I did some Scientology courses about 30 years ago,” Jerry told Billy. “The only thing that bothers me about people knowing that is that it is not my complete wacko resume. It’s just one aspect! I am very interested in self help things,” Jerry continued. “When I was a young man in my 20s I would explore like meditation, and I studied Aikido and karate and yoga and I would just take little things from each of these things.”

“But everyone else takes from yoga and Aikido and all those things, but Scientology has this stigma around it. And you say it was very helpful?” Bush asked. “Yeah, well I didn’t do very much. I don’t know that much, I just did a little but I liked it,” Seinfeld said. “Why did you stop?” Bush asked. “I don’t know… I was kind of flitting from thing to thing. I was interested in exploring,” Seinfeld noted.

[From MSNBC]

I guess that actually does make some sense. Seinfeld was pretty vague about his reasons, but I think a lot of us flitter from thing to thing in our twenties. I learned about lots of religions trying to figure out which one made sense, and did read up on Scientology. Of course that’s also when I realized it was one of the craziest messes of nonsense I’d ever encountered. But their literature had to be some of the funniest stuff I’ve read in a long time. I’m telling you, Dave Barry has nothing on L. Ron Hubbard.

In other Seinfeld “Vegetable Plagiarism” news, Missy Chase Lepine and her publisher, Running Press, did respond to Seinfeld’s comments on Letterman.

“As the publisher of The Sneaky Chef we are troubled that a celebrity of Jerry Seinfeld’s stature chose to go on the Late Show with David Letterman last night and personally attack the book’s author, Missy Chase Lapine.

This controversy arose out of concerns expressed by parents on message boards who noticed that the recent book by Jessica Seinfeld is similar to The Sneaky Chef which was published 6 months earlier. Neither we nor our author have publicly accused anyone of anything.”

Statement of Missy Chase Lapine, author of The Sneaky Chef:

“It was painful to be called names on national TV when I am just a mom who wrote a cookbook to help parents get their kids to eat well.”

[From PRNewswire]

I think the Seinfelds are starting to look pretty low-class, and their timing couldn’t be worse. Promoting Jerry’s first movie and Jessica’s first book seems like a bad time to take the low road.

Picture note by Jaybird: Header image of Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld at the “Bee Movie” Los Angeles Premiere on October 28th. Image thanks to PR Photos.

Jessica Seinfeld wrote a book called “Deceptively Delicious” about sneaking vegetables into your kids’ food. It’s pretty popular, she got a special on Oprah, and more kids are eating butternut squash mac and cheese as a result. Unfortunately, another lady named Missy Chase Lepine wrote pretty much the same book, called “The Sneaky Chef,” a few months before Jessica Seinfeld, and now Seinfeld is being accused of plagiarism. Though she denies the charges, it seems like there’s a pretty strong case against her: some of the recipes and phrasing are nearly identical. Celebitchy wrote a great article comparing the two books.

Well Jerry Seinfeld seemed to think it was a good idea to brand Lepine a “whacko.” Even if Jessica Seinfeld is totally innocent and never saw the other book, Lepine is certainly not a whacko for noting the remarkable similarity between the two. But Seinfeld seems to think it’s a good idea to slander other people who I’m guessing are already feeling pretty litigious.

Jerry Seinfeld turned his wife’s recent cookbook controversy into a comedy bit Monday night, telling David Letterman he and Jessica Seinfeld are paying no mind to the “wackos.”

“One of the fun facts of celebrity life is that wackos will wait in the woodwork to pop out at certain moments to inject a little adrenaline,” he said on CBS’s Late Show Monday night.

The former Must-See star, 53, who was on the show to promote his Bee Movie, couldn’t help but chime in on what he’s dubbed the “vegetable plagiarism” controversy surrounding his wife Jessica’s best-seller Deceptively Delicious – namely, claims that some of the recipes weren’t hers.

“If you’re any good as a woodwork wacko, you’re patient. You pick your moment and then you spring out and go wacko,” Seinfeld told Letterman. “There’s another woman who had another cookbook. And it was a similar kind of thing. My wife never saw the book, read the book, never used the book. But the books came out at the same time. So this woman says ‘I sense this could be wacko moment,’ so she comes out and accuses my wife.

[From People]

I’ve pretty much decided that Jerry Seinfeld is a jerk. I was neutral before, then the whole “defending Scientology” thing made me edge a little towards dislike. Being married to a plagiarizer didn’t help things but her actions weren’t his fault. But calling a totally innocent person a whacko because your wife seems to have stolen her stuff pretty much makes you a jerk. I’d make a “Jerk store” joke, but it’d only be funny if you watched “Seinfeld.” Actually it wasn’t even funny then. So he’s pretty much just an ass.

Picture note by Jaybird: Header image of Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld at the “Bee Movie” Los Angeles Premiere on October 28th. Image thanks to PR Photos.

When we covered the story of how Jessica Seinfeld kissed Oprah’s ass for making her new cookbook a best seller, I mentioned that commentors on Amazon were saying that the book was not as good as an earlier one that also had recipes to trick your kids to eat vegetables by sneaking them into other foods, The Sneaky Chef. It turns out that not only is the idea for Seinfeld’s book unoriginal, the recipes are suspiciously similar to that Sneaky Chef book, which came out this April.

Seinfeld’s book Deceptively Delicious is the top selling book in the US now, and she might need the proceeds from sales to pay for hefty litigation from Missy Chase Lapine, the author of The Sneaky Chef.

Just listen to how close the earlier book’s recipes are to Seinfeld’s:

But 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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

[From NY Daily News]

I could see if Seinfeld had one or two of the same recipes as the earlier cookbook. You might independently come up with a couple of the same combinations if you’re using that concept, like cauliflower with mashed potatoes or spinach in brownies. But green eggs with pureed baby spinach, carrots in tacos and grilled cheese with sweet potatoes? That’s too unique to be a coincidence.

One commentor on Amazon said she did a taste comparison with her friends and their kids of those recipes Seinfeld ripped off from Lapine’s book, and the original Sneaky Chef won for every recipe that Seinfeld copied for Deceptively Delicious. There was just one draw, for a peanut butter and jelly muffin recipe.

I hope Seinfeld has to give a high percentage of the proceeds of her book to the earlier author. It’s not fair that celebrities and their relatives can go into any field they want and become instant successes on name power and insider connections. (Thanks Commentor Granger for bringing this up on the earlier post.)

The author of The Sneaky Chef, Missy Chase Lapine, is a chef on the faculty of The New School in NY City, and is the former publisher of Eating Well magazine. She also founded a natural baby care product line called Baby Spa. What did Jessica Seinfeld do other than leave her rich husband right after her honeymoon to hook up with an infinitely richer husband? Oh that’s right, she was in marketing at Tommy Hilfiger, and she has kids. That must qualify her to write a cookbook.

Maybe this will make publishers and financial backers think twice before greenlighting projects by celebrities who think that they can go into anything on a whim. Seinfeld probably read The Sneaky Chef and thought “I can do that too, and if I change the recipes a little no one will ever know.”

Update: People Magazine reports that Seinfeld told The Wall St. Journal “I’ve never held that book in my hands, and I swear that on my life.” That’s a curious choice of words, especially considering that the full chapter listing of all recipes is available for The Sneaky Chef online at Amazon.

Jessica Seinfeld was on Oprah last week to promote her new cook book Deceptively Delicious, which has recipes that teach you how to trick your kids to eat vegetables by pureeing them up and putting them in baked goods and other kid favorites like chicken nuggets. The book became a best seller this week, and to thank Oprah, Mrs. Seinfeld sent her 21 pairs of some of the most expensive shoes available, mostly red-soled Christian Louboutins, with a note that “there are no words.”

This story sickened me a little, because Oprah is worth $1.4 billion as of last year and she just doesn’t need material things. Still, she fawned over the shoes like she does all the other pricey shit on her “Oprah’s favorite things” episodes, which just makes average people feel like we need expensive brand name luxuries in order to be happy and fulfilled like Queen Oprah.

Here is a clip from the show yesterday. Jerry Seinfeld was on to promote Bee Movie, in which Oprah has a voice cameo. Oprah of course thanked Jessica for the extravagant thank you.

After hearing this story I was interested in Seinfeld’s book, as I have a three year old and it’s very hard to get him to eat vegetables. A lot of commentors on Amazon noted that this topic was covered better in an earlier cookbook called The Sneaky Chef, in which the recipes are a lot more palatable for children by some accounts. Many people expressed dismay that Jessica Seinfeld would publish a book so similar to The Sneaky Chef without providing an acknowledgment of their efforts or inspiration.

I’m inclined to believe she did get a lot of ideas from the earlier cookbook, considering that she decided to spend $20k instead of taking the time to come up with a thoughtful thank you note to Oprah. Then again, Oprah wouldn’t have acknowledged a simple card on the air, no matter how rich and meaningful the prose.

Thanks to The Huffington Post for the video and to US Magazine for the link to the story.

Jessica and Jerry Seinfeld are shown at the opening of The Odd Couple on Broadway on 10/27/05. Thanks to PRPhotos.