CBS REDEFINES "SHOESTRING"

In their world, $35 for the ingredients to one home-cooked family meal is dining on a shoestring. Maybe at Katie Couric's place in Millbrook it is. Heck, in November while I was in layoff limbo we just about pulled off an entire Thanksgiving for less than $35. (I think the two bottles of cheap wine put us over the top.)

Digest this - if you can:

As The Early Show Saturday Edition's "Chef on a Shoestring," Freitag sought to take a traditional, three-course spaghetti dinner and give it a little twist any family would love - on our new, lower, recession-busting budget of $35. And, we introduced another challenge to our "Shoestring" chefs. We're calling it "How Low Can You Go?" The chef who prepares the least-costly meal will be back at the end of the year to create our big, blowout holiday feast!

Menu:
Beet Salad with Crushed Pistachios & Soft Goat Cheese
Lamb Ragu with Rigatoni and Fresh Ricotta
Greek Yogurt with Blood Oranges, Honey & Mint

And seriously, beets? Wife and I would love that, really...but you don't just spring beets on a five-year-old and a three-year-old and expect them to house it down like they're Vikings just home from six months at sea. Advance work must be done to prepare young palates.

But the story has sparked an interest in me, in finding other examples of major-media tone-deafness to family issues. Do jump in and help sprinkle CBS et al. with lots of schadenfreudey goodness!

PARENTHOOD ABHORS A VACUUM

Last month when I landed my new job, I set this week up so that I'd be off today and have one last free day to tie up loose ends before sallying forth in full regalia. It'll be a long time before I rack up any vacation time.

Beast conveniently filled that bit of space with a technicolor-yawn stomach bug, and the mechanic did his part to fill the household's newly-acquired budgetary space with an "oh by the way you need your 30,000 mile service and that'll be four-five-six-fitty or so..."

...so all that loose-end-tying will have to be shoehorned into some other day as I ensure that Beast has a restful day without any of that knees-bent-running-around-advancing-to-the-barf-bucket behavior.

It. Never. Ends.

YOUR WEEKEND ERRANDS ARE ABOUT TO TAKE A LOT LONGER

How does New York plan to fill in a $4.5 billion dollar budget gap and pay for all the goodies Governor Spitzer's been promising hither and yon? Simple. Lotteries. Buttloads of new lotteries.

Wall Street analysts advising the Spitzer administration say any investor who pays $4 billion to operate the lottery will likely have to look beyond the bodegas and convenience stores to higher market venues and a bigger share of middle class players. That could mean lottery games in suburban chain stores like Target...

Doesn't it just figure? Our stops at Target, the one retailer whose checkout lines aren't a tedious death march past ill-trained clerks and malfunctioning scanners, are now going to be gummed up with the same kind of hairy-backed troglodytes who currently jam up your morning coffee stop pondering their scratch-off ticket portfolios.