Heroine Interview from Bluegrass Blessings by Allie Pleiter

Heroine Interview from Bluegrass Blessings by Allie Pleiter:

1. Dinah, tell me the most interesting thing about you.
I love to bake. Anything and everything, but especially things that surprise you. Why just make ordinary cookies when you can make gingerbread hippos? Now, my mom wouldn’t say that’s the most interesting thing about me--she thinks my baking is...well...perhaps we’d better not go there. I love to do cakes, too. They almost always mark special occasions and I have loads of fun making them fit the character of the people they’re celebrating. I’m so jazzed up to do my good friend Emily’s wedding cake in a month or so, I might even forgive her for making me wear pastel ruffles. I own a gazillion pairs of flip-flops and wear them year round, but I’m sure I don’t have a pair to wear with a bridesmaid’s dress like she’s got planned.

2. What do you do for fun?
Baking’s fun, that’s for sure, but my finicky oven has a nasty habit of taking all the fun out of it. I like to be with my friends, that sort of stuff. All of life’s fun, if you ask me. Well, most of it.

3. What do you put off doing because you dread it?
Oh, that’s easy: dealing with my mother. There’s a reason I moved out of New Jersey as fast as I could, you know. We do much better with a few hundred miles between us. I know as a woman of faith, I should show a little more spine (or maybe compassion), but we can’t ever seem to talk without it turning into an instant argument. I love her but she drives me nuts.

4. What are you afraid of most in life?
Not getting the most out of life, I suppose. God hands us this bunch of years to learn what we’re all really about, to figure out how to love each other and decide what’s really important--we need to make the most of it. I couldn’t spend something as precious as life hunkered down in some office doing some sensible job--I need to be out in the world, frosting it!

5. What do you want out of life?
A really good haircut, an obedient oven, and the secret to great royal icing! No, really, I want to be connected with the people around me. To matter to people and have them matter to me. That’s why I moved to Middleburg--small towns do that better than anywhere else. Of course, we get all up in everyone’s business here, but it’s because we all really care about each other.

6. What is the most important thing to you?
Celebrating life. Encouraging and celebrating all the little moments that make up life. Sure, there are the wedding cakes and the birthday cakes of life, but I want someone’s daily cinnamon roll to feel like a celebration. Cupcakes for no reason other than it’s Thursday. Extra frosting. That’s the kind of thing that makes me happiest of all, and why God put me on the planet.

7. Do you read? If so, what is your favorite type of book to read?
Well, cookbooks, but that’s obvious. I read one big, juicy novel on vacation every year. Other days, I’m too busy to manage more than just a magazine.

8. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
When I was younger, I hated my red curls, but now I love ‘em. Why shouldn’t a stand-out gal like me have stand-out hair? Now, I suppose, I’d like to think before I act. I tend to be a shoot first, aim later person, and well, that’s gotten me into a far amount of trouble in the past.

9. Do you have a pet? If so, what is it and why that pet?
If I had a dog, he’d be the fattest dog in Middleburg, that’s for sure. Nope, no pets.

10. If you could travel back in time, where would you go and why?
Baker to a king in some medieval castle! Man, that’s when a feast was a feast and food really mattered. Of course, it was a bit harder then, but the drama would more than make up for it. Of course, then I’d probably have to wear something frilly and pin my hair up in some sort of contraption, but I’d cope just to get the chance to say “I’m the Royal Baker.”