It’s probably a little late in the day here on Thanksgiving for you to use this recipe - but it’s darn good, mainly because of the cream cheese (which is also why they call it the “sinful” mashed potatoes recipe.)

“Sinful” Mashed Potatoes
(serves 6-8)
2 C hot or cold mashed potatoes
1 large package (8 oz.) cream cheese, room temp
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 eggs
2 T flour
salt and pepper to taste
1 can 3.5 oz. French-fried onion rings

Put potatoes in a large mixing bowl. Add cream cheese, chopped onion, egg, and flour. Beat at medium speed until ingredients are blended, then high speed until light and fluffy. Taste, add salt and pepper if needed.

Spoon into greased 9-inch-square baking dish. Distribute canned onions evenly over the top. Bake, uncovered, 300 degrees, for about 35 minutes.

Delicious! But wait! Before we eat, let’s think briefly of others less fortunate than ourselves.

Members of Congress do so on your behalf, and there are several bills in Congress intended to alleviate hunger. Would they succeed? Finding solutions to hunger and poverty is obviously more easily said than done.

There’s S. 1172 and its House counterpart, H.R. 1938. Both are called the “Hunger-Free Communities Act of 2007.” The brief legislative summaries of these bills say they would “reduce hunger in the United States.” (Oy. Grand claims like that put these bills in the “and a pony” category.) Basically, the bills would make grants to various anti-hunger organizations and programs.

H.R. 206, the Anti-hunger Empowerment Act of 2007, would reduce red tape in the food stamp program and give grants to nonprofit anti-hunger groups for a “Beyond the Soup Kitchen” pilot program.

S. 3108 and H.R. 6127 are both called the “White House Conference on Food and Nutrition Act.” They would require the president to call a White House Conference on Food and Nutrition. (Well named bills, don’t you think?)

S. 1575 is the FEED Act of 2007. It would give grants to public agencies and nonprofit institutions “to encourage the use of community resources to combat hunger and the root causes of hunger by creating opportunity through food recovery and job training.”

Finally, there’s H.R. 2129, the Feeding America’s Families Act of 2007. It would “strengthen” the Food Stamp Act of 1977 in various ways. Take a look at the wiki article for the bill to see them all.

It may not be that you want to support these programs, but it is a day to be thankful and to think of those who have less bounty than we do.

And do keep in mind the old saying, amended for this day, “Give a man a turkey and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to turkey and you - no, wait . . . teach a man to fish - yeah, that’s it, fish - and you feed him for a lifetime.”

With the drama of the election and the recent huge bailout and spending bills flying through Congress, it’s easy to forget the kajillions of little things the federal government is churning out all the time.

So here’s one that caught my eye - the Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has just announced a meeting “of the General Conference Committee of the National Poultry Improvement Plan.” It’ll be held at the at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta January 28, so book your plane tickets now if you want to go.

The meeting will be open to the public, but I was disappointed to learn that the public is not allowed to participate in the discussions during the meeting. I had thought that I would share my personal poultry improvement plan, which is to cook it in some oil and spices and plop it into folded corn tortillas with a dollop of sour cream.

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Monday was another day with a cavalcade of bills streaming through the House of Representatives.

While you were watching the bailout (just at the moment I’m posting this, the House is debating the rule that would govern its debate on the Senate-passed bailout bill), or perhaps noting the beginning of the new fiscal year without a budget for most federal agencies, Congress was passing bills on half the things under the sun.

[Previous posts in this series: Silly Season on Capitol Hill; Silly Season, Part Deux; and Silly Season, Part C.]

Here are some of the bills that saw action on the House floor Monday:

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A commenter on one bill says:

I’m shocked that no one seems interested in this bill. It has been introduce [sic] several times and has never made it passed subcommittees. If the public were even vaguely informed they would cringe at the idea of eating food grown on fields fertilized with sewage sludge.

The bill is H.R. 215, the Sewage Sludge in Food Production Consumer Notification Act. It was introduced on the first day or so of the current Congress back in January 2007, and nothing has happened with it since.

The bill would treat food as adulterated if it was produced or raised on land on which sewage sludge had been applied (or if animal feed was produced on this sewage-land) unless there was notice to consumers of the food-sludge connection.

Now, I have no clue about whether sewage sludge is bad for production of food. I’ve eaten a lot of stuff that was grown in compost and bugs and worms and their poo and stuff, and that’s not bad for you. But what the heck - as our friendly commenter said, people should at least be interested in this bill! I mean, we’re talking sewage sludge and food! If you’re not even interested, you must be some kind of sewage-eating freak!

So what do you think? Here’s the current vote on H.R. 215, the Sewage Sludge in Food Production Consumer Notification Act. Click to vote, comment, vomit, learn more, or edit the wiki article about the bill.

What do avocadoes have to do with national security? Nothing!

One of the things the federal government is supposed to be doing is protecting the nation. One of the things the federal government is not supposed to be doing is marketing avocadoes.

But there it is, looking after the marketing of avocadoes grown in southern Florida.

In a Federal Register announcement out this morning, the Agricultural Marketing Service, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is initiating a referendum among producers of avocadoes in south Florida to see if they want the marketing order regulating the handling of their avocadoes to continue.

What are marketing orders? According to the USDA:

Federal marketing orders are locally administered by committees made up of growers and/or handlers, and often a member of the public. Marketing order regulations, initiated by industry and enforced by USDA, bind the entire industry in the geographical area regulated if approved by producers and the Secretary of Agriculture.

What that means is that everybody producing a crop in a certain area has to pay in to a marketing and promotion fund for uses dictated by the majority of producers in that area. Big agribusinesses get to force the small ones to pay for programs that benefit the big agribusinesses because they’re usually the majority of producers and they set the rules. Result? Less competition and less variety in the crops that come to market.

The Agriculture Marketing Service is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is funded by the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. The Senate version of this bill is S. 3289.

Here’s the current vote on the bill. Click to vote, comment, learn more, or edit the wiki article about the bill.