Blog | queermartha

Aug 24, 2018
4 min

A Tale of Two Valleys

I've been part of a wine club with friends from grad school for over 5 years now. The wine club has survived jobs starting and stalling and ending, relationships coming and going and marrying, people moving across the city and beyond, and even members quitting drinking. It has turned out to be one of the more stable things in our lives, and I am pretty impressed that we've managed to keep the club going when every meeting ends with us drunkenly choosing a next date and then f

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Lizzie Hessek

Feb 24, 2017
3 min

Gold Plate Your Food!

Have you ever been eating a delicious piece of cake and said to yourself, "This cake is good, but it would be so much better if it were gold?" I feel certain that you have said that, and I am here to help. For Valentine's Day, our neighbors had a small wine and dessert get-together at their house. I brought Queer Martha's famous chocolate tart, but Valentined it by adding red raspberries on top. Once I finished placing the raspberries, I took a step back and looked at my hand

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Lizzie Hessek

Dec 23, 2016
3 min

Christmas in the North Pole!

Are you looking for a quirky theme for your Christmas dinner? Perhaps a last-minute effort to spice up your holiday? Have you run through the fun decade-themed holiday menus (Victorian, mid-century, Star Wars)? Do you want a very good excuse to wear your fuzzy Santa slipper socks to a formal dinner? Then you should think about hosting Christmas in the North Pole! The idea for this Christmas dinner came from the desire to have a party that was a little goofy and required less

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Lizzie Hessek

Oct 7, 2016
3 min

Baking & Beer : le Cake!

Lately, I've been feeling rather meh about - you know - everything. It's been a lot of this face: My question is: can you suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder during every season? After how many seasons does Seasonal Affective Disorder just turn into "your personality?" That's my question. Luckily, our fair city has cooled down whiplash quick, and it is now cool enough to bake in my kitchen! When you are feeling blue, my advice is to crack open a beer and break out th

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Lizzie Hessek

Oct 6, 2016
1 min

A Rice Update

A few months ago I admitted that I am addicted to sticky rice and I told you all how to make the perfect bowl of rice. My addiction has not subsided - I still eat at least a cup of sticky rice every day - but I have a very important update. My mother bought me a rice cooker for my birthday. It has changed my life. We got this one. The key component that makes this rice cooker my new best friend - besides looking like a space egg - is that you can preset the machine to have ri

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Lizzie Hessek

Aug 19, 2016
3 min

Baking & Beer | Grilled Bourbon Peaches

Happy Friday! We made it through another week! I've mentioned already how ambivalent I am to the season we call summer. One additional reason I find summer to be the absolute pits is that I love baking, and the heat of summer strips me of the simple joy of being in the kitchen next to an oven. This explains the Baking & Beer hiatus here at Queer Martha headquarters. We also spent much of the summer with all of our kitchen gear packed in boxes after our move to the house calle

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Baking & Beer: I Curdn't Resist (Dairy Free!)

Lizzie Hessek

May 27, 2016
3 min

Baking & Beer: I Curdn't Resist (Dairy Free!)

Welcome to a dairy-free edition of Baking & Beer! "Dairy free??" I hear you say, "But, Lizzie, you love butter more than anyone I know. Your love of butter boarders on wildly unhealthy!" I know, I hear you. But I also love my sister-in-law, and she is dairy-free at the moment, so we are going to explore the exciting world of dairy substitutes! Rachel and I hosted a dinner for my mom's 60th birthday recently, and the whole thing - with the exception of the cheese course, natur

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Lizzie Hessek

May 18, 2016
5 min

Agar-Agar: Jello for Grown-ups

I should start this post by letting you all know that my deathbed meal - the last food that I want to savor before I leave this world one day - is without a doubt Stouffer's Mac & Cheese and a big ol' bowl of Jello. I love Jello. In general, I like food that you don't have to chew much (which I suppose bodes well for this being my deathbed meal). Jello is, as far as I am concerned, nectar from the gods. This is all to say that I have a natural propensity to gelatinous things

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Baking & Beer | To-Die-For Chocolate Tart

Lizzie Hessek

Mar 21, 2016
5 min

Baking & Beer | To-Die-For Chocolate Tart

Welcome back to Baking & Beer - Monday edition! I had really good dinner game last week, guys. Between work events paying for my fancy meals to friends heating me up delicious leftovers, I ate super well and cheap! You want to know what pushed my dinner game over the top, though? Monday was Pi Day, and my office had a pie party. Here's a bit of advice for you - pie dinner is always a good idea. I brought my caramel-coffee-chocolate tart. This is an incredibly rich tart with a

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Baking & Beer | Coconut Peanut Butter Cups

Lizzie Hessek

Mar 11, 2016
4 min

Baking & Beer | Coconut Peanut Butter Cups

Sometimes you don't need to break open a beer when you start baking because sometimes you are already a bit tipsy when you come home, you know? You walk through the door after a work happy hour and you say to your wife, "I think we need some coconut peanut butter cups right now, don't you?" And then your cat is like, "I'm helping." You can't say no to Riley, so she is co-blogger of this week's Baking & Beer: Coconut Peanut Butter Cup Edition. Ok, seriously, the greatest thing

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Gingko Nuts: I Think I am Doing it Wrong.

Lizzie Hessek

Feb 22, 2016
3 min

Gingko Nuts: I Think I am Doing it Wrong.

There is a grocery store Rachel and I love to go to in Philadelphia called Hung Vuong. This is a magical place that has something for the both of us: aisles and aisles of condiments for Rachel and row after row of cookies for me. There are so many varieties of mochi a girl can die happy, you know? Sometimes I lose track of time as I let the sheer magnitude of cookie options wash over me. Anyway, at our last trip to Hung Vuong, a vacuum-sealed package in the refrigerated aisle

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Lizzie Hessek

Feb 15, 2016
6 min

Baking & Beer | Chocolate Mousse Cake

Well, Valentine's Day has come and gone, and I took none of my own advice. Instead, Rachel and I pretty much slept all day. And that, my friends, was glorious. I did manage, however, to make a chocolate fraisier, which I am translating as a strawberry-studded chocolate mousse cake, to commemorate the day of love. In fact, I only ate strawberry-studded chocolate mousse cake on Valentine's Day.... Thinking back on that now, that might have been a poor life choice. It was delic

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Baking & Beer | 3 Ingredient Foolproof Crêpes!

Lizzie Hessek

Feb 7, 2016
5 min

Baking & Beer | 3 Ingredient Foolproof Crêpes!

Hello and welcome back to Baking & Beer! In this post we are going to demystify crêpes! Let me tell you some of the ways that crêpes are awesome: 1.) They are delicious in both their savory and sweet forms. 2.) They are easy and cheap to make. 3.) They can be made for dinner for one or you can have a whole crêpe party! Indeed, crêpe parties are fun, easy, and universally loved. To make your party prep even easier, the crêpe recipe that I am about to reveal to you can easily g

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Lizzie Hessek

Jan 30, 2016
6 min

Baking & Beer | Baguettes!

So we are a day off of our normal Friday Baking & Beer edition, but it's been a weird week. With all the snow that hit the East coast, I ended up having to walk to work every day, which caused me to arrive late, thus I stayed late, and therefore I missed important blog deadlines. But no amount of snow or evening meetings in the suburbs of Philadelphia could stop me from baking for you, and, boy, do we have an exciting Beer & Baking to jump into today. As anyone who has ever d

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Lizzie Hessek

Jan 27, 2016
6 min

The Best Snow Day Fried Chicken

Hello from the winter wonderland that is Philadelphia! Ok, so most of the pretty snow has gone away and I am left only with the memories of a beautiful blanket of frosty happiness covering the sidewalks and parks, but that is enough to get me through the next few weeks of trudging through dirty slush until the next snowstorm hits (fingers crossed). Rachel and I had a fabulous snowy weekend. It started with a sleepover birthday party for our friend Joanna (an adult sleepover w

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Lizzie Hessek

Jan 22, 2016
5 min

Baking & Beer | Long Live the King Cake

Hello and welcome to the third installment of Baking & Beer! In this series we crack open bottles like we crack open eggs. I'm going to be honest with you, though. I did not drink beer during this creation. There is rum in the recipe, so I substituted. Let's always substitute things when we bake. Who cares if it throws off the proportions and messes everything up. At least you can take total ownership of your messed up cake. Anyway, this week we are finally going to be making

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Lizzie Hessek

Jan 15, 2016
4 min

Baking & Beer | Puff the Magic Pastry

Ok guys. I was really hoping to post the recipe for a Galette des Rois on Baking & Beer today (It's our special January cake!), but let me tell you something: I have no photos of completed cakes to show you. As much as I would like to say that this is because my galettes are so delicious that they are gobbled up the moment they are released from the oven, the real reason is that I keep making these cakes to bring to friends' houses, and by the time the cake is done baking I'm

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Lizzie Hessek

Jan 12, 2016
3 min

The Greatest Food Bar of All

I'm not going to keep you guessing. It's a meatball bar. I am a big fan of food bars at parties. I like the variety, the you-do-you mentality. When I was little I didn't even know that Wendy's served hamburgers because I was so into their salad bar. I didn't eat anything at the salad bar except those little ham cubes and vanilla pudding, but that was what was so magical about the salad bar - I didn't have to! I did me! I have not been back to Wendy's since the demise of the s

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Learn to Cocktail: Rusty Nail and Rob Roy

Lizzie Hessek

Jan 6, 2016
4 min

Learn to Cocktail: Rusty Nail and Rob Roy

Some things I don't know how to do I am more than happy to let other people do for me. Changing a tire, for example. Other things I don't know how to do and I have big plans to change that. Playing the fiddle, for example. Sewing clothing is another example. And, of course, making killer cocktails. A few years back, I was having dinner at the ever-lovely Emily Teel's house. I believe it was a Tuesday night and we were eating duck confit that was leftover from her restaurant j

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Lizzie Hessek

Jan 1, 2016
3 min

Winter Doldrums be Damned

At the end of today, the holidays are pretty much over. I say "pretty much" because technically Christmas lasts until the 6th of January when the three kings finally get to Jesus and the Epiphany happens. A quick question about this - were Mary, Joseph, and Jesus just, like... hanging out in a stable that whole time? I feel like they could have sorted something a little more comfortable out over the first 12 days of Christmas. Unless maybe there was some mommy blogger in Jude

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