Talk show host Oprah Winfrey welcomed Jessica Seinfeld on her show last week to promote her cookbook “Deceptive Delicious” and was thanked in an unusually generous manner: 21 pairs of nicely expensive shoes.

“Deceptive Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food” is a sneaky cookbook written by Jessica Seinfeld with the help of a nutritionist for parents troubled by their picky offspring and was released by Harper Collins earlier this month.

The book has become a national best-seller, earning the No. 1 spot on the hardcover Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous list in The New York Times.

Oprah announced earlier this week that she taken aback by an extremely generous Thank You note from Jessica Seinfeld: 21 pairs of shoes, most of them Christian Louboutin high heels, which retail for $800-$1200 a pair. That would add up to a $20,000 Thank You gesture, from one rich friend to another.

Enough of the shoes though, Jessica Seinfeld has other things to mind about right now. Such as uncanny similarities between her newly published recipe book and “The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids' Favorite Meals,” by Missy Chase Lapine, published by Running Press in April 2007.

The New York Times reports extensively on the subject, noting that many of Seinfeld’s recipes closely resemble Lapine’s.

Astute readers posting on Amazon.com, Oprah.com and parenting sites, noted the similarities in recipes. Both authors have recipes for sweet potato in grilled cheese sandwiches, spinach in brownies, mashed potatoes with hidden cauliflower etc.

Jessica Seinfeld told the New York Times in a telephone interview that she came up with the idea of sneaking healthy foods in children’s favorite dishes more than two years ago; she was in the kitchen puréeing butternut squash for her youngest son and cooking macaroni and cheese for husband Jerry Seinfeld and their two oldest children when it occurred to her to hide the squash in the macaroni and cheese.

“I’ve been obsessed with this for the past two years,” Seinfeld told the Times. “I don’t need to copy someone’s idea. I’ve got enough going on in my life.” Husband Jerry Seinfeld joined the conversation, saying: “Let’s be realistic, my wife isn’t in this for the money or the publicity. I really don’t think we have another Watergate here.”

Lapine, founder of the Baby Spa natural products line, meanwhile has been quite guarded in her comments, saying she felt “uncomfortable” when she saw “those unusual combinations that I thought would brand me as a lunatic showed up here, too,” the Times reports.

Jessica and Jerry Seinfeld have been married since 1999 and have three children, daughter Sascha, almost 7, and sons Julian, 4 and Shepherd, 2.