There is something interesting and even fascinating about everyone, you included.
One of my favorite things about being alive is getting to know other people.
If I had an hour with you, I might ask you things like:
Who was your best friend in elementary school?
What’s the most trouble you ever got into?
What’s your favorite thing about being alive?
Do you feel like you picked the right career?
What’s one book you recommend to everyone?
And believe me, I could go on. I am naturally curious and always have been. So, when my Husband insisted on this Strawberry Lemon Loaf, and I saw it was a NYTimes recipe by a woman named Millie Peartree, I had to look her up. “Who is Millie Peartree, and why does she get to have a recipe in the New York Times Cooking App?” I thought. To be honest, I’d never heard of her.
My search turned up way more than I bargained for. It turns out Millie Peartree has quite the story.
Born in the Bronx, Millie (named after her mother, Millie Bell Peartree of Savannah, Georgia) grew up with a slab of cornbread always on the counter and her mother’s baked mac and cheese on Sundays. She loved to cook, and the better she got, the more her mother let her “use her groceries,” aka cook for the family. Millie talked about culinary school, but her mother said, “I’m not going to pay for something you already know how to do.” Millie did go to college, where she met a whole new world of food and way of cooking through new friends, and it was, in a way, her culinary education.
When Millie was a senior in college, her mother was diagnosed with colon cancer. Millie’s mother died a few years later, and Millie, at the age of 25, had to take over raising her four siblings, two of them autistic.
She got a job in advertising sales at Viacom and won a holiday bake-off with her cupcakes. Word got out about her mad culinary skills, and she got her start in catering in 2009, cooking for a few celebrities and Knicks basketball players.
One day as she was walking home from the gym, she saw a “for rent” sign in a restaurant in her neighborhood and decided to go for it. She opened Millie Peartree’s Fish Fry & Soul Food in The Bronx in 2017 to rave reviews. The potato salad, the mac and cheese (her most famous dish)—all to die for, according to The New York Times and others. Two years later, in 2019, she expanded the restaurant and the menu, and life was good.
Until November 22, 2019, when she got notice from Con Edison that gas to the building would be shut down immediately and indefinitely due to unauthorized gas plumbing work that had been done in the building (someone had illegally installed a gas dryer in the basement). She’d just gotten a delivery of 150 pounds of whiting, 50 pounds of shrimp, and 50 pounds of catfish and was at the beginning of the Friday night rush. She turned around and looked at the stove just as the pilot lights went out, and…that was the end of her restaurant.
But that was not the end of Millie Peartree. After the initial shock wore off, she dusted off her catering business and was able to keep her employees employed. Things were going well, and she was just about to cater her biggest event yet when the pandemic hit. With lockdown came event cancellations and more heartbreak.
What did Millie do? She turned right around and started to feed essential workers using a kitchen space donated by Amazon and private donations to fund the supplies needed. In just a few months, Millie Peartree Catering had fed 6,000 essential workers quality, home-cooked meals like jerk chicken and Asian stirfry bowls (vs. the pizza and salads they’d been getting). As the City began to open back up, Millie turned her attention to feeding The Bronx’s food-insecure children and created the 501c3 non-profit, Full Hearts Full Bellies. Through Full Hearts Full Bellies, she’s dished up over 100,000 meals for the K-12 kids in The Bronx and installed greenhouses on vacant lots in Mott Haven, historically one of The Bronx’s poorest sections. She has said another restaurant is not in her future (she’s also said never say never), but sharing recipes and creating community around food will always be.
The power of sharing food and recipes never ceases to amaze me. It will always be the great connector in our society. You and I have connected from afar over a shared love of food and the stories behind it. I hope you enjoyed getting to know Millie Peartree (is that not the best name for a chef?) as much as I have.
And I hope you enjoy her Strawberry Lemon Loaf as much as my Husband did (I got one slice, and he polished off the rest in less than 48 hours).
If you have a sec, send me a note and answer one of those questions above. I am, of course, dying to know!
Hugs from afar,
Julia (in the kitchen)
P.S. The one book I recommend (and give) to everyone is “About Alice” by Calvin Trillin. Everyone deserves to be loved like Calvin loved Alice. It is my all-time favorite love story.
