Queerantine Pies: Ofrendas to Queer Familia
04/28/20
by Sarita Hernández
#queerveganpies
My new routine is: coffee and correspondence, packaging and labeling pie boxes, pie crust baking, breakfast, disinfecting, 4 to 5 pie fillings, lunch, 4 to 5 pie deliveries, lovemaking, dinner, disinfecting, nerding out, and sleep. I was in a major funk these past couple of weeks, especially since being permanently laid off from my first full-time job with benefits after working as a contract laborer for four years. My health insurance didn’t even last a year! I was just another art educator tossed aside as a “nonessential” museum worker. I felt disposable, like QTPOC often do. My mental health was not in a good place and so all I could do was make a pie. I conjured up my “Abundance Seed Pie” to remind myself that I have so much to offer, an overflowing heart and an abundance of printmaker, zinemaker, and piemaker skills. I started to sell my queer vegan pies more intentionally during queerantine to be able to make rent. The job applications I was sending in were freezing searches, so I continued with my #queerveganpies, checking in with queer fam, and gaining inspiration from our QTPOC creative collective, Marimacha Monarca Press.
Sarita’s Abundance Seed Pie is made with dark chocolate, coffee, cashews, coconut oil, almond milk, coconut cookies, coco shreds, flaxseeds, dates, agar agar, peanut butter, soft tofu, sweetened condensed coco milk and lots and lots of healing, tears, and besos.
Making pies is like writing my journal entries: the pie crusts are the journal cover sculpted with my hands, and the pie fillings are my little ofrendas to mi queer familia, and to whoever or whatever moment inspires its creation. Almost all of my queer fam has a pie dedicated to them. The titles are mini-poems and love letters to queers and moments in my life. There was Marshmallow Shrimp Pie for Estephany Guzman ( @realfreshshrimp) a bad ass comedian and performer, Rasquache Birdie Pie for Moni Pizano Luna (@kash.monis) a brilliant visual artist and educator, S’mores Amores Pie for David Escobedo (@es_musashi) an amazing graphic designer and educator, and many more #queerveganpies!
Completing pie orders in a messy kitchen.
A lot of us have been growing our skill sets to supplement income stolen during this apocalypse and tapping into our skillshares from Marimacha Monarca Press. Marimacha is a collective of queer and trans* people of color, a familia where we engage in visual storytelling through prints, zines, arts education workshops, and events. We are currently organizing for our annual sexy calendar and a new t-shirt series of sexy queer phrases, while many of us are also exploring our individual hustles, such as making collars, printing shirts, or even making pies. If you can, check out our fam’s crafts and support our werq!
During queerantine, I started to nurture creative parts of myself to intentionally bring savory, sensual, sexy, sweet pleasure to the stoops of Chicago queers. My kitchen studio smells like a pie shop. I miss making my prints and zines, but this is motivating me and guiding me out of my creative block, especially since I get to deliver queer tasty pie pleasure across the city with the two cute delivery bois I’m in quarantine with: Lena (@gnarlena), a talented piano teacher and skater who inspired the Berry Queer Besos Pie, and Domingo (@nepantla.jpeg), a fabulous artist and HIV awareness advocate who inspired the Domingo Kinda Love Pie. Both have had their work hours significantly cut.
Sarita’s Domingo Kinda Love Pie is made with figs, blood orange, fig and orange preserves, soft tofu, sweetened condensed coconut milk, turmeric, agar agar, almond milk, coco shreds, coco cookies, coconut oil, and big booty besos.
Some of my favorite recent conjurings are Domingo Kinda Love Pie and Mami’s Besotes Pie. The first is dedicated to my lover for their golden birthday, inspired by Etta James’ “Sunday Kind Of Love” and the everyday tenderness found within this time of isolation together.
I’m so, so grateful for my queer fam and lovers supporting me through this freaky time. I hope that all the taste testings and kinky pie deliveries bring queer pleasure in the time of corona. We can’t touch each other or flirt under the disco moonlight, but we can imagine and connect in alternative ways.
The one that hit me deep, especially during this queerantine, is Mami’s Besotes Pie, inspired by the moment I came out to mi mami about being unemployed, stopped lying to her, and she shared her support of my queer piemaker dreams. This poem pie is being donated as a raffle prize for Community Barrio Funds to support undocumented families in Chicago who were affected by the coronavirus and I hope they feel mami’s love through every sweet bite. Please donate to this amazing fundraiser!
Sarita’s Mami’s Besotes Pie is made with cacao, semi-sweet xoco chips, strawberries dipped in xoco, pecans, coffee, soft tofu, agar agar, sweetened condensed coco milk, coco shreds, almond milk, coconut oil, graham crackers and muchos besos.
Engaging with my kitchen studio as a pie shop, I am conjuring up spells for queer pleasures on the daily to celebrate and honor our existence, communal care, and beauty. Doing this has offered me so much healing in return. I’m gonna make a zine and print about this soon; I feel myself coming back, and out of these blues. Everything is so absolutely uncertain all the time. The only certain thing is how temporary everything always is. My hope is that my #queerveganpies bring you queer pleasure, even if only momentarily.
Sarita making vegan pie crust. #queerveganpies are inspired by queer familia and everyday life, created and delivered by Sarita Hernández in Chicago. They go for $30 on a sliding scale. Send @saritamaritza a message on Instagram to tell what you’re craving and to place your pleasure delivery.
Sarita Hernández is an arts educator, oral hxstorian, and print/zinemaker from salvadoréxican Califas based in Chicago. Sarita is co-founder of Marimacha Monarca Press, a queer and trans* people of color zine familia based in Chicago’s south side since 2017. She is interested in artistic interventions with the historical archive and imagining alternative forms of social documentation, preservation, and activation of everyday hxstories, survivals, and resistances. She makes #queerveganpies, rasquache prints, and sad boi zines.
Contact via email or Instagram for prints and zines, events, #queerveganpies, and kink performances.
smaritzah@gmail.com | saritamaritza.wordpress.com | @saritamaritza | #queerveganpies | @marimachamonarcapress
Sarita Hernández worked on this piece with Stephanie Manriquez, the Quarantine Times Tuesday editor. Each week, Stephanie selects a Chicagoan to share a commissioned creative response to the pandemic.
