Sure, you can grab a hot dog or slice of pizza in New York for cheap, but a balanced meal for $10 or less? In Manhattan? That's the idea behind the new site CheapEatery.com.

At first it seemed too good to be true. When Daniel Lyu, a former producer for The Food Network, told me about launching CheapEatery as a database ranking and profiling affordable restaurants in Manhattan and Brooklyn, we had to put him to the test. Can you get a balanced meal for $10 or less in the city that boasts some of the world's most expensive restaurants?

The opening scene of the new movie Trucker, about a tough, single female truck driver confronted with motherhood, will grab you. Not because it's a woman having an orgasm, or that the woman is sexy, girl-next-door Michelle Monaghan, but that it looks incredibly authentic.

Throughout the 93-minutes of Trucker, you can watch it on mute and still feel the gritty transition that Monaghan's character is forced to go through. Her acting is just that raw. (Oscar time!)

If you're like me, you like to eat Nutella at your desk, out of the jar and offer your spoon to any busybody co-worker who walks by, looking disgusted.

On one such blissful occasion, I smeared a dollop of Nutella on my desk, to see if the desk wanted some. OK, actually, I was running a consumer experiment testing leading brands of paper towels, investigating which one gives you the easiest clean-up and return on investment. Let's meet our three challengers:

Everyone's favorite satirical news source, The Onion, is coming out with a brand new book, Our Front Pages: 21 Years of Greatness, Virtue, And Moral Rectitude From America's Finest News Source, just in time for the holidays.

The book shows you vintage Onion, going back to 1988, to the satirical paper's University of Wisconsin-Madison days, in black and white. With an introduction by NBC's Brian Williams, funny beyond the anchor desk, Our Front Pages has timeless headlines like "Panhandler Strike Enters Third Week," "Secondhand Smoke Causes Secondhand Coolness," and "War! Come On, Let's Have One!"

In Walletpop's Big News Podcast, I talked with editor-in-chief, Joe Randazzo, and web and politics editor, Baratunde Thurston about the political divisions in America today, and stupid people. In our discussion, you'll find out the do's and don'ts to landing a job at The Onion. Happy headline writing, y'all!

What do you get if the 1960s and a banker on Wall Street had a baby? Social entrepreneurism. Though it has a long history, it's been a buzzword since Muhammad Yunnus and his Grameen Bank won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for lifting people out of poverty through microloans.

Social entrepreneurism isn't charity; it's business as usual, tailored to those in high-need, and the subject of an upcoming documentary, The New Recruits: Can Capitalism Save the World?

"There's been this thing called charity, that as long as I can remember was the approach to helping those in need," says Jeremy Newberger, one of the film's directors and producers. Charity, says Newberger, has shown us it can't be the only solution. "There's still poor people, there's still suffering."

Newberger and his partners in Ironbound Films, Seth Kramer and Daniel A. Miller, wanted to understand this growing phenomenon of a market driven Peace Corp, so to speak. So with their video cameras, they shadowed three out of the nine 2009 fellows of the Acumen Fund, a non-profit global venture fund, as they tried to build businesses in some of the world's most volatile regions.

"You're experiencing offices in the developing world," says Newberger, who calls the film "Apprentice meets Slum Dog Millionaire." Playing on this theme, The Office's Rainn Wilson is the narrator, which infuses the film with his dry humor.

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Hawaii and New York have absolutely nothing in common, except for making Bette Midler the Eco-Diva she is today.

This Friday, October 30th, Ms. Midler is throwing her annual Hulaween Ball, a lavish Halloween wonderland in the Waldorf Astoria, with a little hula-flavor--a nod to her Hawaiian roots. It is the most important event of the year for her non-profit, The New York Restoration Project, an organization determined, among many other things, to plant a million trees in New York. It's up to 250,000 trees planted, and counting.

The organization, which raises most of its funding from Hulaween, works hard to ensure that every nature-starved New Yorker lives within walking distance to a "green space." Other greening initiatives include youth education programs, building community gardens and events in low-income neighborhoods.

I spoke with Midler last spring about "rough" New York in the 1970s, when it was dangerous to step foot in Central Park at any hour of the day.

If we can't count on the government to keep us safe from the the Madoffs, coal ash spills that swallow up entire houses, arsenic in our tap water, or E. coli in our hamburger meat, then it's nice to have American D.I.Y.-ness to hold big business accountable.

Meet The Yes Men, two wacky guys who pose as regular corporate executives and say in public the things they wish corporations would. They do this by setting up websites cloned to look like the multinational corporations they want to prank, then wait to get invited to big industry conferences. When the invitations roll in, and they do, it's gloves off.

Their recent acts of hilarity include posing as Exxon Mobil execs and giving a morbid keynote speech on climate change to 300 oilmen at Canada's largest fuel conference. They also stopped by the Wharton School of Business as representatives of the World Trade Organization to tout new exploitation strategies for Africa.

"You learn the difference between right and wrong when you're very young, and somehow most of us forget it when we go out to work. Because we've set up a system where corporations are rewarded for bad behavior as long as they're making a profit," says Mike Bonanno, one half of the key duo of The Yes Men's operation.

Now their exploits have been captured in a movie, "The Yes Men Fix the World," which shows their activist sword-wielding. It is now hitting the road--you can look for a screening near you here.

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Bette Midler's New York Restoration Project is at it again. The non-profit, which works to revitalize parks and public spaces throughout New York City, built a community garden in one of New York's toughest neighborhoods, in the Bronx.

The garden, which looks like something out of Vanity Fair, opened October 6 and will also host cooking demonstrations, gardener workshops, summer concerts and community movie nights.

Designer and television host Sean Conway, author of the simply fabulous Cultivating Life: 125 Projects for Backyard Living, created the gardens by consulting locals on their needs and wishes. Most of the plots of land will go to school children at neighboring P.S. 73 to learn about gardening.

At 43, Marisa Acocella Marchetto finally had life in its place: she was getting married for the first time and her cartoons were in demand by The New Yorker. Suddenly all of her success took a back seat to breast cancer, which she had to fight without health insurance.

Marchetto captured this life-changing battle in her cartoon memoir, Cancer Vixen: A True Story. Her Cancer Vixen foundation pays for women, without insurance, to get mammograms at St. Vincent's Comprehensive Cancer Center.

On Monday evening on New York's Fifth Avenue Marchetto joined actor Dylan McDermott, Estee Lauder spokesmodel Elizabeth Hurley, and Evelyn Lauder of The Estee Lauder Companies and founder/chairman of The Breast Cancer Research Foundation, to raise awareness and funds to fight a cancer that strikes one in eight women.

Just as the fall means investing in a good coat, it also means dealing with open enrollment for your employee health plan. It's a necessary hassle: choosing the benefits and plan you'll be locked into for the next year is as important as doing your taxes. A recent Harvard study found that nearly half of Americans who file for bankruptcy do so because of medical bills. So give your health benefits the same scrutiny you'd give your taxes, and consider this simple guide your "good accountant" for common health-care concerns.

1. Think about all your health needs in the coming year, and those of your parents and/or children. Do you need a regular mammogram, either because of your age or family history? If you're thinking of getting pregnant, do you want a plan that covers in vitro fertilization?

You may not like facing the big questions, but young people in particular tend to be unprepared for disaster and enormous medical bills -- such as my friend who broke his hip in a car accident while working long, exhausting hours on an independent film. It's smart at any age to get short-term disability insurance, so money is still coming in if you can't work.

As Americans are finding they have to stay in the workforce longer, aging parents need all the help they can get. Consider a plan that will help you support your parents' medical needs, letting you take time off from work or get reimbursed for certain coverage assistance.

2. Know your provider. Most major health-care insurers let you search their sites for doctors and dentists without needing a login, which gives some sense of their customer service and lets you see which doctors are in the network -- always the cheaper option, even if you have a relatively flexible PPO. Then search the internet for advice and reviews on the care providers.

3) Flexible spending. That's the golden rule: if your company offers a flexible spending account, as 85 percent of companies with at least 500 employees do, then go for it. FSAs let you use pre-tax dollars to pay for qualifying medical expenses, which can save you up to 20 percent on common expenses including insurance co-payments and deductibles. You choose how much to set aside for the year; the amount is deducted from your paycheck.

Try to spend it all by the end of the year -- you'll forfeit whatever you set aside for your FSA that you don't use. One way to unload that spare FSA account is to visit your drugstore. Prescriptions and many over-the-counter drugs, and first-aid items, are covered. Another option: FSAs cover Christian Science practitioners and acupuncturists too, according to IRS guidelines. Be sure your company abides by those guidelines; some firms impose limitations to avoid the paperwork. Your company, not the IRS, will have the most accurate list of what's covered under your plan.

4) Perks! The average person spends $4,000 for health benefits at a company. That's a lot, but there are breaks that can lighten that load, such as gym-membership discounts (or even home equipment -- but find out for sure before you buy a treadmill).

Many insurers also offer complementary and alternative (CAM) therapies to cover massage, accupuncture, and other holistic methods of relaxation. So once you're done doing your homework on health benefits, you can reward yourself with a massage, recharge, and get back in the jungle.

5) The more you know, the less people can take advantage of you. Don't be afraid to ask your human-resources department all the questions you need to understand this stuff. That's what they're there for. And don't let up until you fully understand it, and they're explaining it in clear, simple terms. When it comes time to fighting any bunk charges or getting reimbursed on an expensive vaccine, you'll be happy you did.