The Ramona St Keep

One day I will own and operate a little restaurant that isn't much more than a cozy hole in the wall. The tables and chairs--maybe 8 tables total--will all be rustic and mismatched, as will the tableware and glasses. I'll buy the stuff at rich lady rummage sales and I'll call my restaurant the Ramona St Keep in honor of our town's own Beverly Cleary, and here is what I'll serve.

In the mornings I'll make buttery yellow eggs served with seasonal vegetables, sweet roasted roots in the winter, crisp poached asparagus in spring, heirloom tomatoes and corn and patty-pan squash with bacon in the summer. Eggs come with biscuits some days, some days rich Irish soda bread, studded with fennel seeds or dried currants. For people who don't eat eggs I'll offer one or two alternatives, like an ever-changing breakfast panino--figs, parma ham and goat cheese one day, spinach, garlic and feta the next--and house-made granola with Greek yogurt. Strong coffee. Strong tea that comes to the table in a pot. Maybe on Sundays a wicked Bloody Mary. In a pitcher.

Lunch will be a stream-lined affair, with one daily soup and 2-3 blue plate specials. I'll cook what's on the market and according to whimsy, but it will be lovely comfort food. Creamy roasted tomato soup with my own special red chili grilled cheese, zucchini-corn cakes, curried chicken salad stuffed into hot naan, lemon risotto topped with butter-laced crabmeat. Warm bread twists folded with salt crystals and garlic.

No suppers. I like to spend evenings cooking for my family.

I think the trick will be to keep it simple. Find a rotating menu that I can make sublimely and stick to it. (Experiment at home only.) Get cute waitstaff. And have a little place, so that I don't get too stressed out. And make arrangements with local farmers to get fresh everything.

I'm really serious about this. In the last two years of thwarted ambition and career hell, with the resultant malaise of mediocrity settling over me, I have only genuinely enjoyed a few things. And cooking for other people is one of them. And I've found myself growing unaccountably jealous of the Portlanders I see, not older than me, running their own foodie businesses and seeming, well, happier than I am. And I think to myself, why the f**k am I lugging boxes around for management I despise when I could be at home elbow-deep in flour? And so, I need a plan to get myself elbow-deep in flour and happiness.

I'm going to start taking some cooking classes to bone up on skills I have but need to improve upon, like shaping artisan bread and cooking for a large number of people. (Can you even take a class on that?) I want to start making my own chutneys and pickles, too, and I'll need to start ferreting some money away. I'll also need to read up on running a successful small business.

But--unless life gets in the way, which it does do--this is my new 10-year plan.

At 38, I will own a thriving little business that smells like cinnamon and carmelized onions and pays more than my crap job at the warehouse.

You'll come, won't you?