The Jessica Seinfeld controversy continues - and this time, Jerry’s wife isn’t laughing. (Wow, that sentence sounds so gossip blog…oh well, I’ll roll with it.) According to The Smoking Gun:
“An author today sued Jerry Seinfeld’s wife for allegedly plagiarizing a cookbook she wrote and also accused the comedian of defaming her as a “wacko” during an interview with David Letterman. In a federal lawsuit, Missy Chase Lapine alleges that Jessica Seinfeld “brazenly plagiarized” from her 2007 book “The Sneaky Chef” in the writing of Seinfeld’s own cookbook (both volumes focused on how to prepare healthy meals for finicky young eaters).
When news stories appeared detailing similarities in the two books, Jerry Seinfeld launched a “malicious, premeditated, and knowingly false and defamatory attack” on Lapine, the complaint charges. As part of that campaign, Seinfeld went on Letterman’s show and described Lapine as “angry” and “hysterical.” He then compared her to the kind of “wackos” that had previously stalked Letterman. The comedian then added that Lapine was a “three-name woman” and “if you read history, many of the three-name people do become assassins.”
Perhaps Jerry should have shoved one of Jessica’s spinach-laced brownies into his mouth before going on Letterman? Seriously, though, how sad that all of this is happening over the noble act of convincing (okay, tricking) picky eaters into consuming more vegetables.
As I enjoy my last week of vacation before I return to New York City for school, my mind starts to wander towards all sorts of issues that didn’t really apply to me in the last year, when I was living in the woods and farming at a Jewish retreat center. The biggest one is paying rent, which I didn’t have to think about in my prime forest real estate (granted, I don’t yet have an apartment to pay rent on, anyone looking for a live-in farmer?).
Another is teaching; in the last year I’ve found that I really enjoy explaining things that I care about, but for the next two years, instead of having a relatively captive audience of Adamanicks to work with and teach, I’ll be a captive audience myself, paying very close attention to my teachers…
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The fabulous folks at Notschlock came up with the Jewish Food Pyramid T-Shirt, which plays off of the food pyramid that booted the concept of ”four food groups” out of collective consciousness in the early 1990s.
Notschlock’s Pyramid Picks:
Tier 1: bagels, matzah, matzah balls, pita.
Tier 2: Pickles, hummus, tzimmes, dill, figs
Tier 3: shmeers, cream cheese / gefilte fish, lox, pastrami on rye
Tier 4: gelt coins, schmaltz, jelly rings, latkes, blintzes
When it comes to “sustainable eating,” I’m starting to worry that perhaps the Brits take the (organic carrot) cake.
Maybe my sources are skewed from having a Manchester-bred boss who sends all-staff emails everytime the British foodies do something interesting. (e.g. when England’s Walmart-equivalent, Tesco, commits to making their products’ ”food miles” transparent, or long-time organic farming supporter, Prince Charles makes a cookie.)
As if the Prince of England wasn’t enough proof of England’s foodie superiority, now I find out that Jamie Oliver - the British hearthrob and “Naked Chef” -has a new book and TV show called Jamie at Home that features food grown in his backyard and cooked in his kitchen. Jamie says:
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No, it’s not a joke:
The Vegetable Orchestra performs music solely on instruments made of vegetables. Using carrot flutes, pumpkin basses, leek violins, leek-zucchini-vibrators, cucumberophones and celery bongos, the orchestra creates its own extraordinary and vegetabile sound universe.
Does this give anyone else the sense of peace and hope for the world that it gave me?
So maybe they did stop their covert nuclear activities almost five years ago, but now there’s a chance that we’re supporting the axis-of-evil with our choice of snack:
World Briefing | Middle East
Israel: The Hunt for Illegal Nuts
Published: November 22, 2007
Israel has asked the United States for help in cracking down on illegal pistachio nut imports from Iran, an official said, after Washington warned that the trade was hurting efforts to curb Tehran’s nuclear program. Israel imports pistachios worth $26 million annually, mostly from Turkey. But Washington says nuts from Iran are mixed in with the shipments, undermining economic sanctions meant to force Iran to stop developing its nuclear abilities. An Agriculture Ministry official said Israel was willing to help but, as in the past, the problem was how to figure out the nuts’ origin.
A much more adversarial description of this exchange can be found here.
Fear not, gentle readers - if you want your eating to contribute to peace, love, and understanding, enter the Build a Sustainable Gingerbread House competition over at Bake for Change.
And about those pistachios…maybe we should just start a nougat for nukes exchange program .
A cute poem by Rabbi Ed Feinstein, hat tip to Danya at Jewschool for this:
Oh the Jews of old Jewville, just loved holidays,
And kept them religiously, in all of their ways.
On Rosh Hashana, they ate apples and honey
Then came to the Temple, all dressed in Armani.
On holy Yom Kippur, they prayed and they fasted
Through rabbis’ long sermons, they kvetched but they lasted;
Till Neila was over, and proclaimed Cantor Fox:
“Go home and break fast, on bagels and lox!”
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The perfect thing to eat under the Chanukah bush…
(x-posted at Lilith)
* To clear up any confusion - the picture at left is not me! See below for details…
So, my boyfriend came to Chicago with me for Thanksgiving dinner. Although he’s met my parents before, this was the first time he’d ever visited the town where I spent the first 18 years of my life. Overall, the trip and meal went smoothly, but as expected there were some sticky moments. Like when my boyfriend and parents agreed it would be just the most wonderful idea to watch my bat-mitzvah video!
We gathered around the television and watched as visions of my painfully pre-teen self flashed across the screen. On the one hand, I enjoyed this trip down Jewish milestone lane. Although I’d love to forget the braces, the awkward limbs, and bad hair-cut of my adolescense, I was also proud. I enjoyed the opportunity to root for this miniature version of myself and imagine that the “little Leah” could sense the loving presence of her future self, watching as she chanted the haftorah. I also loved the way the video made my parents smile and my boyfriend say, “wow, you were really great!”
On the other hand, it turns out there’s nothing like a little backward glance to shake the foundation of your current reality.
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Brought to you buy the incredibly sarcastic joys of someecards.com. More of their Thanksgiving-related foolery here.
Does it pay to read blogs? Maybe if I hadn’t checked a few of my favorites this morning (metafilter.com, jewlicious.com, nextbook.org), I wouldn’t have come across these bewildering, highly amusing and slightly nauseating headlines:
- A talmudic analysis of a soccer player’s lament, as it relates to restraints made of kreplach
- An FBI plan to track Iranian terrorists in California based on monitoring spikes in falafel sales
- White Castle’s 2007 Recipe contest winner? Slider Latkes (only slightly less gross than last year’s winner -I think I’m gonna be sick)
OK, back to work, people. (Image via Jewlicious)
Thanks Google Images for randomly bringing The Jew & The Carrot to this comic and to a very funny, thrice-weekly updated website called Soupmines. Kosher! Carrots! Comics! It’s a match made in heaven. :)
Further proof (from the NY Times no less) that kale is the best food ever. Melissa Clark writes in “If it Sounds Bad, it’s Got to be Good:
“Nonetheless, I ordered the [raw kale] salad. It arrived as a shadowy green mountain under a blizzard of grated pecorino Rossellino cheese (a nutty Italian sheep’s milk cheese with a ruddy rind) and bread crumbs, flavored with lemon and chili. Tangy, spicy, slick with good oil and crunchy from the earthy-flavored kale, it was as pungent and rich as it was fresh and clean tasting; a veritable raw foods epiphany. The minute I left the restaurant I craved another.”
Jessica Seinfeld (Jerry’s wife) recently published a book, Deceptively Delicious, which offered sneaky recipes that slip vegetables into kid-friendly food - only to find out that the book had already been written - i.e. Missy Chase Lapine’s The Sneaky Chef. I wonder what Mrs. Seinfeld would think of the idea that - prepared well - maybe vegetables like kale and spinach don’t need to be pureed into brownies after all.
As the saying goes: “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” Well, in the case of one synagogue in Memphis, Tennesee, when life gave them BBQ, they made kosher BBQ.
Memphis is home to the annual World Champion Barbeque Cooking Contest, attracting over 100,000 attendees each year. But with categories like “Patio Porkers” and “Whole Hog,” and more than 30 tons of pork cooked throughout the celebration, the event is far from kosher friendly. Nearly two decades ago, the members of the Anshei Sphard – Beth El Emeth Congregation, asked the contest organizers if they might start a kosher barbeque section, and extend the festival one extra day, so Jewish BBQ aficionados could compete on Sunday instead of Saturday.
Undeterred when their request was rejected, they started their own BBQ contest in the shul parking lot, featuring kosher beef instead of pork. This Sunday, they’ll celebrate the 19th annual Asbee/Kroger Kosher BBQ & Festival.
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