Value-of Var Into A String

I am using the Google AJAX search API for simple queries. I want to do so
only for the current day. Right now I have:

var date = new Date();
var today = date.toString();
document.write(today.toDateString());

which prints

Wed Jan 31 2007

I'd like it to look like "Jan 31, 2007" before I query Google, ie
eliminate "Wed" and add a comma after 31. Can someone tell me which
combination of Date methods to use and how?

Also I want the value-of of the string in a searchString; "today" and
not the actual value is used below. Can someone also tell me how
to get to the value of the var.

var searchString = "al-Sadr OR Al-Sadr OR ('Mahdi' AND 'Army') AND today";