The Ridiculousness of the Jessica Seinfeld and Missy Chase Lapine Cookbooks

Have you heard about the ridiculous cookbook by Jerry Seinfeld’s wife (Jessica Seinfeld) that she pretty much ripped off from another ridiculous cookbook by Missy Chase Lapine. Honestly, if you’re going to borrow someone elses thoughts and recipes - hunt around for some that are worth taking!

Do I sound mean? I sound mean. I apologize.

It’s funny, I’m not as shocked about Jessica Seinfeld using MCL’s recipes and ideas as I am that she WOULD use them. After all, taking other’s ideas is pretty mainstream. No one can read The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter and deny that the first influenced the latter. Books, movies, websites, recipes, fashion, television shows, hairstyles, etc - the list goes on forever. People see something they like then think they can improve upon it and BAM, they’re off. Of course you can make a case for it being hideously wrong in many cases, but in a lot of ways, it’s just keeping the original alive.

Seinfeld’s ridiculous book brought attention to MCL’s ridiculous book - a book that no one else was even remotely thinking about…. For good reason.

The gist of both of these ridiculous books is this: Fool, trick, and lie to your kids about the food they’re eating. Sneak mashed potatoes into their brownies, pureed zucchini into their macaroni and cheese, mashed up cauliflower, squash, spinach, and avocado into puddings, lasagna, mashed potatoes into hot chocolate, and many more similarly ridiculous methods of “tricking” your kids. Apparently both women think that the ends justify the means - that getting these foods into the kids, by any means possible, justifys the stupid method.

(Oh, great, my vocabulary just graduated from “ridiculous” to “stupid” - shame on me.)

I’ll grant them this: Our kids need to eat more a more healthy diet. Obesity isn’t just an inconvenience to kids - it can be critically dangerous. But how, for the love of sanity, does pumping veggies into brownies promote a lifetime of healthy eating? DUH, like veggies will ever present themselves that way again. What about when your kid hits 19 and finds himself in a restaurant faced with orange, green, white, and yellow choices that he isn’t remotely familiar with. Okra? Green beans? Cauli- what? WTF?

Why not fix the fruits and vegetables the way they were meant to be fixed and serve them the way they were meant to be served? You know, the way they were for generations and generations?

In my opinion, the recipes are ridiculous and the whole premise teeters back and forth between stupid and outrageous. But, if you’ll allow me just a little more room to rant, I’ll tell you what bothers me the most.

A little story: My middle daughter, Brittany, decided around the age of 12 that she no longer wanted to eat meat. She wore braces at the time and meat would get caught sometimes and it grossed her out. By the time the braces came off, meat was off of her list of things to do. Fortunately, there’s an endless (and, frankly, delicious!) line of protein burgers and other foods that my husband and I could buy to cook and grill for her. Added to fruits and vegetables (not wearing any disguises, thank you very much), these vegetarian items have provided a healthy diet. Brittany is a perfectly beautiful, healthy girl that you’d never suspect ate any differently from the rest of us.

When she first launched herself into vegetarianism, she was completely adamant about what she wanted and didn’t want in her foods. Her concerned little face was all I needed to see to make sure I never resorted to trickery in the kitchen. Even when she isn’t anywhere near the kitchen, I boil vegetables and create a vegetable broth to use in her dishes when I’m using a chicken broth in the rest of our dishes. I never even stir her vegetable beans, chili, stew, soup…whatever…with the same spoon I stir our’s with.

It’s a matter of trust and a matter of treating others the way you’d want them to treat you if the tables were turned. I would never want to be lied to, tricked, or be in the receiving end of tomfoolery.

If we want others to respect us, we have to respect them…and there’s nothing ridiculous about that.

If anyone sets a standard for lying to and deceiving their children, they’re doing only one thing: Teaching their children how to do it. They’re telling them, “If it’s for the right reasons, then go ahead - lie, deceive, trick…do whatever you have to do.” So, when the child hits their teen years and they’re confronted with being honest with mom or dad or lying - they do what they’ve been taught. Their mind says, “This would upset mom and make dad yell….so I’ll lie. After all, my reasons for doing so are good. It’s for their own good as well as mine.”

Just something to think about. And for once, this book loving, cookbook collecting fanatic is telling you, “Dont’ buy the books!”