Plagiarugula? Plagiarism Meets Arugula By Jared Beck

Ladies and gentlemen, the sanity of America is at stake. Not only is Jerry Seinfeld’s wife writing cookbooks teaching mothers how they can slyly slip healthy vegetables into foods for their children, but she is being accused of what Jerry considers “vegetable plagiarism” by another cook with similar methods.

Please, please, don’t copy my arugula.
That clever, covert cook used to slip onions into every meal we had, knowing full well that I hated them with a passion and would feign gags at first sight.
Jessica Seinfeld released her cookbook “Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food” (HarperCollins) earlier this month. Thanks to a spot on Oprah Winfrey’s day-time talk show for 1950's-era home-makers, Jessica’s book has become a best-seller. Over one-million copies are currently in print.

However, Missy Chase Lapine’s cookbook “The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids’ Favorite Meals,” released by the Running Press, was on the public scene for months before Jessica’s ever appeared. Lapine has accused Jessica of stealing her method, of stealing her spotlight for this ingenious method that obviously she had invented.

Well, I suppose if Lapine can try to bring charges against Jessica for “vegetable plagiarism,” my own mother could sue Lapine back to the Stone Age. That clever, covert cook used to slip onions into every meal we had, knowing full well that I hated them with a passion and would feign gags at first sight.

Yet the ridiculousness only intensifies when Jerry goes onto the David Letterman Show and insults Lapine and the ludicrous charges she is bringing against his wife. Says Jerry, the upcoming star of “Bee Movie,” “My wife never saw the book, read the book, used the book. But both books came out at the same time. So this woman says, ‘I sense this could be my wacko moment.’ So she comes out . . . and she accuses my wife. She says, ‘You stole my mushed-up carrots. You can’t put mushed-up carrots in a casserole. I put mushed-up carrots in a casserole. It’s vegetable plagiarism.”

What is it with these people? Are they really competing to be the CIA or MI6 of healthy cooking?

I long for the days of heated celebrity beefs that people followed in the news daily for the latest development. I need to see some Tupac versus the Notorious B.I.G., some Nas versus Jay-Z, or even Rosie O’Donnell versus Papa Bear O’Reilly. I’m waiting for death threats, drive-by shootings, maybe a little vandalism. All I’m really getting is celery in my nachos, and I didn’t even want it.

Instead, we have swashbuckling spatulas and debate over who is the most deceptive at sneaking food pyramids into spaghetti. I, for one, know that the healthiest secret agent is not Pizza Hut.

Luckily for both parties involved, this controversy has driven sales for both cookbooks, even if they are virtually identical. I wonder if these two women managed to sneak any sense into their pages.

Photo credit: Jessica and Jerry Seinfeld [http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/books/10/31/people.jessicaseinfeld.ap/index.html]