Pesto Pasta with Dungeness and Lobster...

The recipe that made me stop posting content on Instagram

If anyone of Mami’s Maniacs would like to send trinkets, Starbucks gift cards or nail polish:

Mami Maisonet
5960 S Land Park #222
Sacramento, CA 95822

If you want to contribute to this artist in residence, mami’s f’ing expensive ass burgers or Dollar Tree visits:

Venmo: @illya-maiso

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I’m barely getting back into my hometown, it’s about 8:30PM. The summer air is warm, but that Delta breeze is blowing down the roads and avenues that stretch all the way from the Sacramento River. There’s still traffic, but the traffic is chill. The cars I encounter are moving slowly like deep Southerners molassesly fanning themselves on a veranda, as if they’ll overheat if they move any faster in the thick air. People are strolling in my surrounding neighborhood. Some folks are sitting and having beers on the patio of the neighborhood restaurant, as y’all love to do, the patio’s faux Edison bulb strands light the pathway home. I realize I’m singing along with WAR as they spill out of the GTI’s Bluetooth connection. The song and the nighttime summer weather finally reminding me of happier times spent in the backseat of Mami’s 1976 Regal or my Nino’s 1978 Caddy with baby blue and pink pinstripes while they cruised the boulevard during the summers of the 1990s.

Turns out, I needed a break from the stagnation. It’s been a while since I’ve felt that I’ve got nothing on my mind.

I stood inside the pool doing my exercises and started to cry. Pushing off the side of the pool with my feet in one swift and strong motion, I breast-stroked my way through the cool water until I lifted my head midway…and started to cry. I just kept fucking crying during the entire hour that I tried to shake this phantom feeling off.

Feeling the weight of the world grow heavier as my body left the waters that make me feel weightless, I headed for the hot tub to sit for ten minutes. My body sighed as it descended in the overly chlorinated tub. Ten minutes later I was sitting on the side of the pool, drying off, the perfume of chlorine and pine trees penetrating my nostrils. I was still crying. When I was good and dry, I went to the hotel website. There was a room available. I booked it and charged it to the game. I abandoned my responsibilities and headed directly to the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.

Above Image: View from Fog Harbor Fish House, you can see part of Alcatraz on the Right

I don’t know what a mid-life crisis feels like, but I’m convinced that I’m going through one. I’ve been fantasizing not about a younger lover or a sports car, but just running away. The call of the road becoming stronger as the light of day grows shorter.  I sometimes zone out on the highway or backroads about just driving on…never turning around to head back home to the comfort of the middle class neighborhood I spent so much of my life trying to move into. And my new life is a good life.

It seems silly.

The morning of the escape was an usually cool morning and the backyard sprinklers just popped out of their hidey-holes and were spritzing water onto the green lawn that has patches of yellow. They were making that spritzy sound. I was sitting under the roof that extends the length of the porch of our detached mother-in-law unit. The spritzy sound started to intermingle with the sound of the nearby highway and the morning delivery trucks.

All of these sounds are the sounds of my childhood home, where Mami still lives. Also nearby a freeway and the old Campbell Soup factory which is now a Macy’s fulfillment center. A few sounds are missing from my neighborhood; gunshots, literal and vocal cries for help, cars peeling out, machismo claims on whose block the block belongs to.

My life is a good life. And yet…I’m getting…itchy.

PPQ Dungeness was closed on the day I arrived. Which is its only day closed during the week. Of course. My room wasn’t ready so I couldn’t just grab and go and my car was already under the shackles of the valet. I had to find somewhere where I could sit outside and I wanted seafood. For some god forsaken reason, I chose Fog Harbor Fish House. On Pier 39.

Not one to do touristy things, especially when I know summer in the city can be crowded, even during a damn pandemic. Pier 39 was drawing some pretty impressive crowds of equally masked and unmasked tourists in their San Francisco fleece jackets they purchased at quadruple the price because they only packed shorts and tank tops thinking San Francisco’s summer is much like the rest of the country. Joke’s on you, tourist. Karl is hilarious.

It’s a nice day in one of those makeshift plywood cubicles the homeless use at night for various functions. To the left is a view of the Golden Gate Bridge against the clear sky, a view of Alcatraz and the tour boats leaving their wake. But, to the right are city pigeons with limbs in various degrees of mangled, fry-stealing seagulls cawing their obnoxious calls against obnoxious tourists’ toothy grins and all of it…all of it…covered in shit. Both bird and human.

A limited menu appeared before me. Why, why did I order the fish and chips? Elongated romaine lettuce leaves topped with broad-liner parmesan and frozen Dungeness from the previous season. Fish fried in lukewarm oil so it glistens with over saturation served with a side of the tiniest single cup of tartar sauce the world has yet to produce. And all of it is happening under the careful lullaby of an unoffending Waif-voiced singer doing a cover of Madonna’s Like a Virgin pouring out of the restaurant’s speakers. 

I’m in a hell of my own making.

“illyanna, don’t you have any happy thoughts you’d like to share? You’re always sharing the same sad old stories.” That’s true. But, when you’re in therapy working out and learning how to not be you, these feelings are constant. I have to unlearn how to not fist fight as a solution. I have to unlearn how not to come in hot, and try for coming in lukewarm. I have to unlearn not to be so angry that I jump out of my car, approach the driver behind me (because they nearly rear ended me) and all while holding a bat. True story, by the way. It’s stupid to react that way and it’s pretty egocentric; that foo could have a gun.

When I was young, I’d take long walks in the autumn. I’d walk past (passed?) homes and look inside their windows. The yellow light of their living room lamps spilling out onto damp sidewalks against the smell of falling leaves and porch Jack O’Lanterns. And it gave me a safe and warm feeling. Who knows what was going on the inside of that house. But, I always wanted a house like that. And now I see people walking by our house with their dogs and they look inside our window, especially when I decorate for autumn or Christmas. And I’m like…

Goddamn. I went through a ton of Shit and sacrifice to get this lifestyle and yet…I’m still antsy. Still unsure. More confused than ever because I don’t know what to do with the old bits of myself that were once my armor that ensured I survived the hood, but are now the reasons I often find myself in trouble. My therapist can only do so much.

But, I just rolled back into town and I’m not thinking about any of that. I’m just singing to WAR’s Summertime as the nearby restaurants’s patio bulbs light the pathway home.

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Pesto Pasta with Dungeness and Lobster

Serves 4

1 pound of pasta

1/4 cup of Walnuts

2 cups Basil

1/2 cup Italian Parsley

3 Cloves of Fresh Garlic

3/4 cups of Olive Oil

Salt and pepper, to taste (watch the salt because the cheese can be salty)

1/4 cups of grated Parmesan

1 pound of lump Dungeness

1 pound of lump Lobster

1 lemon

Boil your preference of pasta.

By the time you boil the pasta, your pesto should be done and you’ll also need some of the pasta water.

Add your walnuts, parsley, basil, garlic, and half your olive oil into a food processor. Blitz until it becomes a paste. If it’s still too thick, slowly add the rest of your olive oil through the feed tube. You may not need all of the oil, it should be thick enough to coat the noodles.

Once the pasta is finished to your liking, reserve a cup of the pasta water. Drain the pasta. Add the pasta back into its cooking receptacle and add half of the pesto directly into the pasta. Mix vigorously, ensuring every noodle is coated. I do it this way because the residual heat will keep the pasta warm, but not cook the pesto.

Add the rest of the pesto.

If it looks like it needs a little more sauce, add some of the pasta water. If it looks good to you, don’t add the water.

Add in your parmesan, half your lump crab and lump lobster. Toss and toss the cheese, pasta, pesto, crab and lobster. Mixy mixy.

Once you’re ready to serve, distribute the remaining crab and lobster amongst the servings by placing some on top of the pesto pasta. Squeeze some lemon on top of everything.

Thee end.

Notes: TBH - One pound of crab and lobster is a conservative number. If you like a lot of crab…bump it up to two pounds.