1015 Surprise Casserole
Best made with Texas 1015 super-sweet onions, so-named because they are planted Oct. 15.

2 eggs
1/4 cup butter
3/4 cup light cream (or half-and half)
3 medium 1015 super-sweet onions, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups grated Swiss Cheese, divided
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 cup crushed saltine crackers, divided
2 tablespoons melted butter

Melt 1/4 cup butter in large skillet and saute onions until tender. Place half the onions in a 1 1/2-quart deep-dish pie pan. Sprinkle 1 cup Swiss cheese and 1/2 cup cracker crumbs over onions. Repeat layers of onions and cheese. Beat eggs with cream, salt and pepper. Pour evenly over onion mixture
Melt 2 tablespoons butter in skillet and stir in remaining creacker crumbs. Lightly brown, then sprinkle crumbs over casserole. Bake at 350 degrees 25 minutes. Makes 6 to 8 servings. An excellent accompaniment to roast beef or ham.
Enjoy!

Lots of my fellow bloggers have been saying good-bye to Summer and greeting Autumn with lists and plans and fond farewells. Here in Houston, we may wish for autumn to come, may long for the sweet relief of cooler weather and lower electricity bills, but pretending that the end of August or the beginning of school or the day after Labor Day is really the beginning of autumn is farcical. We can only start pretending on the first official day of fall: September 23rd, the autumnal equinox. Mind you, the weather hasn’t arrived yet, but we can start pretending. Let the longing for autumn begin! After all, Autumn is only a state of mind.

****NOTE: SCROLL DOWN TO THE NEXT POST TO ADD YOUR REVIEW TO TODAY’S SATURDAY REVIEW OF BOOKS*****

Here’s my favorite autumn poem:

Bloggers Celebrate Autumn

Dawn lists her autumn delights, in many of which I share her joy.

And the Seventh Carnival of Children’s Literature at Wands and Worlds has a fall harvest theme. Sheila Ruth has lots of good, fall, bookish links for lovers of children’s literature to enjoy.

Question: Why are used copies of Mousekin’s Golden House selling for over $50.00 on Amazon, but the rest of the Mousekin books are available at reasonable prices?

In Living Color: Fall Leaves, a homeschool fall unit study.

It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day; the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving

Fall Book Lists:

Seasonal Soundings’ Autumn Reading Challenge, a delightful collection of lists of what various participating bloggers plan to read this autumn.

Librarian Pam Miech writes in the Providence (RI) Journal about fall food books, specifically books about pumpkins and apples. Someday, I’d like to do a whole year of homeschool in which we just do unit studies on different foods: apples, pumpkins, pecans, bread, rice, peanuts, beans, etc. In fact, a series of blog posts outlining unit studies on those foods and presenting resources for such a study would be fun, too. But Ms. Miech has already done apples and pumpkins for me.

Don’t forget to contribute to Dawn’s (By Sun and Candlelight) Early Autumn Field Day. Any posts or pictures about nature of any kind are welcome, and the deadline is Monday, September 25th.

In addition to Robert Frost, I also like Neil Diamond. I have eclectic tastes.

1. Have you ever been told you look like a celebrity? Who?
Never. There’s a reason I don’t put a picture of myself on my blog. 🙂 No, really, I don’t mind my looks, but I’m afraid after all this time of no picture, I’d disappoint anyone who was wondering what I look like. It’s always better to keep people guessing.

2. If different from above, who should play you in a movie of your life?
I chose Emma Thompson. No, I’m not nearly as pretty as she is, but who said my bio-pic had to be true-to-life?

3. What movie character do you most identify with?
Napoleon Dynamite. I, too, have skills.

4. What literary character do you most identify with?
David Copperfield or Charlie Brown.

5. What musician or vocal artist do you most identify with?
This question is a stumper. Kris Kristofferson? Sort of second tier, and although we can carry a tune, neither of us can really sing. Don’t tell him I said so. (Kris Kristofferson’s official website says he’s “a legend.” What do I know?)

6. What biblical figure do you most identify with?
Rebekah. I’m married to a wonderful man, after a whirlwind courtship, and I can be a bit underhanded and conniving if I don’t watch myself and pray to be delivered from temptation. I don’t think I play favorites among my children, though.

7. What animal best represents you?
A sloth? No, maybe a nice mama bear who moves rather slowly and likes to hibernate for at least part of the year. I only become aroused if you threaten my cubs.

8. What meal or dish best represents you?
Tex-Mex. I’d like to be spicy and and a bit wild and foreign, but I must admit that I’ve been tamed and toned down and Americanized.

9. What drink best represents you?
Vanilla coke. Plain, but fizzy, with a little bit of flavor added.

10. What shirt, dress, outfit, or other piece of apparel most reflects who you are?
When I was in junior high, my heart’s desire was to have a purple pantsuit. I still have fond memories of the purple (double knit) pantsuit that I received for my birthday, and I think if such a thing were available nowadays in my size I would wear it. I guess I’m just a 70’s, purple pantsuit sort of girl.
I also feel very wild and gypsy-like in my red broomstick skirt!

If you’d like to play, feel welcome. You can answer here in the comments or at your own blog. Let me know if you play. I stole the questions from Jared at Thinklings about a month ago. I’m just now getting around to finishing my answers. Hey, I’m a bear, slow but sure–with gypsy aspirations.

Here’s one more of Penguin’s and my five best whatever lists. This time we’re listing best villains in literature. Computer Guru Son says Sauron isn’t a villain; he’s just Evil incarnate. He insists that Saruman is the real villain of LOTR. Either way, Tolkien created some villainous characters. So did DIckens. And C.S. Lewis (The White Witch, Screwtape, Professor Weston).

THE BEST VILLAINS (according to the Penguin List)
The Brothers Karamazov
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad
Diamonds are Forever
Ian Fleming
The Master and Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov
The Secret Agent
Joseph Conrad

Best Villains (according to Semicolon)

Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. Duh. Sauron is the villain of all villains.

The Murder of Roger Akroyd by Agatha Christie. No comment. I don’t want to spoil the ending for those who haven’t read it, but . . .

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis. Screwtape is a nasty little villain, full of himself and his mission to tempt a soul into sin.

The Singer by Calvin Miller. World-Hater is a fairly good represention of the Arch-Villain, too.

Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens. Ralph Nickleby is a spider, in the mold of other Dickensian villains such as Madame Defarge, Mr. Quilp, and Uriah Heep.

I chose this book, published in 1995, because I was looking for another book by the same author because Ms. Mahy is a New Zealander. (We’re studying Australia and New Zealand right now.) I finished it because, in spite of the stretch to my powers of imagination in believing some elements of the plot, the characters and some of the ideas expressed were intriguing and memorable.

Contact! Somewhere in my head all sorts of wheels and cogs began to spin and engage, pushing one another round and round. Miss Credence must have read this story when she was a child, and it had been like a turning cogwheel pushing other wheels in her head. Its energy flowed from wheel to wheel (that’s how stories worked for me, too), and Miss Credence had produced a story that was all her own.

Yes! That’s how stories work for me, too. I find somethng in a story, or maybe the whole story, and it pushes some other half-remembered story element, and the whole thing becomes a part of My Story. I would have loved this book for this description of the power of story if for no other reason.

Hero, the narrator of The Other Side of Silence, is on the other side because she’s a twelve year old elective mute; she doesn’t talk, except privately and infrequently to her older brother.

I almost never spoke. I had somehow magicked myself into silence. All the same, even in the heart of my silence, I was still a word child. . . .
I have already said that, though I didn’t talk, I was a word child. But in my family we were all word people. . . .
Supposing I had been turned into a book back then I would have wanted to turn into The Jungle Book, the story of Mowgli, a boy who lived in the jungle and talked the language of the animals. Or I might just have made do with The Secret Garden.

Aren’t you already becoming fond of Hero? Then, there’s her family. Annie, Hero’s mother, writes books about children and chid rearing and supports the family with her books and her speaking at educational conferences. Mike, Hero’s dad, keeps the house and enjoys doing so, even if his mother, Hero’s grandmother, is appalled that her son is wasting his intelligence and potential on a job as a homemaker. Hero’s big brother, Athol, spends his time reading and pretending to be absorbed in his studies while he takes in everything that goes on in the family. Her little sister, Sapphira, carries her book with her everywhere with her, Mrs. Byrne’s DIctionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words. She’s memorizing all the words in the book.

The story really begins with two incidents: Hero falls out of a tree into Miss Credence’s garden, and Hero’s older sister, GIinevra, comes home after “four years of vanishment.” These two seemingly unrelated occurences begin a chain of events that will eventually reconcile the two lives Hero believes she lives, her True Life with her family and and in relation to the outside world and her Real Life, a story that Hero lives inside herself and in her own thoughts.

I recommend the book, although the plot’s a bit outlandish. Hero’s family is somewhat out of the ordinary, too. Elective mutes don’t narrate their own books too often either, I would imagine. Still, it’s a great ride.