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In a recipe column in The Record today, Chef Mario Batali says meat is "overused."

Once you get past the riveting Page 1 story about a 58-year-old Dumont woman bankrupted by her illnesses, there isn't much to read in The Record's once-special Sunday edition.


People like Frances Giordano eventually will be helped by national health-care reform, so can you imagine what would happen if selfish Republicans succeed in repealing the law?


The two other stories on the front page are follows to previous reports on a former police officer who is charged with killing his childhood friend, and a onetime lawyer at that shadow government known as the Port Authority. Who cares?


He needs editing


On the front of Local, former sports reporter John Brennan uses the wrong verb in the first paragraph of the weather story, and nobody on the assignment or news copy desks caught it. He wrote:


"North Jersey sloughed off the winter's first measurable snowfall Saturday...."


"Sloughed off" means "discard as undesirable, get rid of or remove." Brennan meant to say "shrugged off."


Despite all his years in the business and his hard sell to the editors of every one of his stories, Brennan writes at the level of a high school journalist.


Red-light cameras have proven to be life savers, but you wouldn't know that from today's poorly edited story on L-7 that quotes unnamed critics.


Food follies


In Better Living, contrast the columns by Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung (F-1) and restaurant owner and Chef Mario Batali (F-3).


Ung promotes low-quality food at chain restaurants, including mystery chicken and farmed salmon. Batali reports meat's reign is waning, and offers a healthy pasta recipe without cream or butter.


After more than a decade as a columnist, Mike Kelly still doesn't get it that readers look to him for strong opinions, not rhetorical questions. 


In his assessment of Cliffside Park Mayor Gerald Calabrese on the front of Opinion, Kelly should have condemned the politician for being propped up by a corrupt system for nearly 50 years, not seek to balance his column with opposing views.