My Delicious Deception

My mother gave me Jessica Seinfeld's cookbook for Christmas. Jessica, wife of Jerry and mother of three, came out with this cookbook called Deceptively Delicious. The basic premise is hiding vegetables in the foods children are willing to eat. The idea is a good one but I'd actually had it myself. I started hiding vegetables in my son's tomato sauce about 2 years ago. Because tomato sauce is comprised of tomatoes, a vegetable.....or is it a fruit....At any rate, it resembles a vegetable so I don't know that my idea to hide additional vegetables in the sauce was particularly inspired. I'm thinking I should've thought of it a long time ago.

My son ate vegetables as a baby. He had no choice really but he didn't spit them out or gag on them the way he does now. Now it's like feeding pills to a dog. Nine times out of ten the broccoli winds up on the floor. When I started hiding veggies in his tomato sauce, I also started enforcing a daily multivitamin. I can't take the regurgitation of food.

In Jessica Seinfeld's book, she uses purees that she claims to make herself on Sunday afternoons. She lines up a big pile of veggies from the farmer's market and roasts or steams them to prepare for the food processor. She blends and blends all the live long day. Then she stores them in labeled baggies and puts them in the freezer in more plastic containers.

I have a couple of problems with her book. First I don't believe for a second that she and Jerry are sitting at home on Sundays making purees. Second, I'm guessing she's cracking the whip to get some illegal alien to type out labels on her personal labelmaker machine. Third, she's using twice as much plastic as she needs simply to make things organized. This tells me she has one of those fridges that gets cleaned every week and everything is put in proper rows or stacks.

The coup de grace? Yesterday a woman named Missy Chase Lapine filed a lawsuit against Jessica Seinfeld and her husband Jerry for what she termed copyright and trademark infringement. She's also suing for defamation of character because Jerry took some time on a recent Letterman appearance to call her a wacko. Ms. Lapine published her book, The Sneaky Chef, in April of 2007, six months before Seinfeld's book was issued. Lapine claims the two books are similar in design, structure, cover art and overall look and feel.

Since Lapine and Seinfeld and I all had the same idea, I don't think the premise - hiding veggies in nuggets - is that radical. It is possible for at least two people to express their takes on this single concept. However, the list of similarities between the books sounds extensive and worrisome for Seinfeld. Of course she's a celebrity once removed so worst case scenario she's facing a day of picking up garbage on the Van Wyck.

In good conscience I feel I must return my copy of the book. I mean what if Jerry decides to steal my big idea, the one about getting professional wrestlers to dress up in veggie costumes and appear at elementary school recitals to promote healthy eating. J'accuse Jerry I would say to myself. Next thing I know he's on Leno calling me a piker.

So I'm returning the book. I'll likely not buy The Sneaky Chef either. The thing is I don't really have the energy or the staff it takes to make gobs of puree and inject it into hotdogs. I'll keep up with the tomato sauce and I'm putting a bit of zucchini zest on my son's turkey sandwich. I'm just not one of those moms. I'm beginning to think no one is unless she has a nanny, a gardener, a sex surrogate and a laundress.

My delicious deception? I read the book, took the ideas I liked and now I'm returning it. Yes I am a piker and I don't care what Jerry says about me. Hey Jerry, the Bee Movie sucked. How about them apples?