Sweet Hot Corn Cake
FOR THE SYRUP
1 cup blackberries
¼ cup honey
½ cup fresh-squeezed orange juice (I used a tangelo)
2 tablespoons orange juice
1 teaspoon cornstarch
FOR THE CORN CAKE
1 cup all-purpose flour
½ cup yellow cornmeal
¼ cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1¼ cups buttermilk
3 tablespoons honey
2 large eggs
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 ear fresh corn, kernels sliced off and cob milked (to milk the corn, after you slice off the kernels, run the blunt edge of your knife down cob and reserve any leftover pulp and liquid)
2 jalapeños, seeds and ribs removed, chopped
½ cup blackberries
Zest of 1 orange
1 teaspoon fresh thyme
Butter for frying
Start the syrup first. In a saucepan, combine blackberries, honey, and orange juice. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to a simmer. Let simmer so the berries cook down for 10 minutes while you prepare the corn cake.
In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients—flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl, mix your wet ingredients—buttermilk, honey, eggs, melted butter, corn, corn milk, orange zest, thyme, and jalapeños.
Combine wet and dry ingredients.
Slice blackberries into small chunks, removing any thick cores if needed. Gently fold blackberries into cornmeal batter.
Pour blackberry syrup mixture through a fine-mesh strainer. In a small bowl, combine 2 tablespoons orange juice with cornstarch. Combine well. Add small amounts of blackberry liquid to cornstarch mixture to bring the temperature up. Then add it all to the remaining blackberry liquid in a saucepan. Bring the mixture back up to a boil to thicken. Remove from heat; let cool.
Melt some butter in a nonstick skillet over medium heat. For each corn cake, add ¼ cup batter to skillet and cook until golden brown on each side.
Plate warm corn cake and top with a tab of butter. Drizzle with blackberry syrup, serve, and ENJOY!
* * *
“Do you remember that yearlong plan you had for me?” I asked him. “Well, I’m about to fuck it up again. I’m so sorry.”
But Matt and his team couldn’t have been more gracious. The stunt team got an amazing body double who made me look like I was in really good shape, and she did all the heavy lifting for me. Clayne Crawford took incredible care of me. All these people had been working with me on the day I had miscarried, so they knew what it meant for me to be pregnant again and were very gentle with me.
After I’d started showing, I went to the doctor fully prepared for her to give me some kind of awful news. I white-knuckled my way through my regular ultrasound, and the doctor said, “Hey, kid, everything looks good. The heartbeat is really strong and you’re in your second trimester.” I was amazed.
Then, she added, “But, you’re over thirty-five now, so you’ve got to go to the high-risk doctor in Poughkeepsie.”
I was afraid for that appointment, and I’d learned my lesson, so I waited for Jeff to come home to join me. I knew that when things went badly and we were separated physically, everything was worse. This time, I wanted him with me if there was bad news. When advanced paternal age is added to advanced maternal age, the probability of frightening things occurring is higher. I had asked worst-case-scenario questions during my first trip to the doctor, and she had prepped me for bad news. All I could think was that Jeff was right: we had our perfect boy, and I should call it a day. But I had wanted this baby so badly for so long.
I was edgy on our way to the appointment in Poughkeepsie. I’d heard the heartbeat. I’d seen movement. We’d gotten the blood work back; we knew the baby was a girl. I had ultrasound photos showing her growth. But I couldn’t let myself enjoy it. During the high-risk ultrasound, they checked every single inch of the baby. They measured everything while I looked up at the screen showing our baby inside of me. You can see everything. Her profile, her little hands. The tech knew that we were scared and said, “She’s perfect. If I were having a baby, this is the ultrasound I would want.”
But I was so untrusting.
Then the doctor came in and said, “She’s perfect. There’s not even one yellow flag here.”
“I knew it,” Jeff said. “Awesome. Just awesome. Thank you, doc.” And then he got real huggy with this man he had only just met. The doctor left the room, and Jeff saw my face. The terror of letting yourself feel joy after great loss can be overwhelming. My chin got tight as it does when I’m fighting emotion. He pulled me into his chest and whispered, “It’s gonna be great.”
All of a sudden we thought we should pick out a name, we should get ready for this little girl.
We sat in the backyard, watching Gus splash in the pool during one of those hot early autumn days. I’d written up long lists of girl names, combinations of names I liked from books and old family names. Jeff was polite about it, but I could tell they were all rather stuffy and old-fashioned for his liking. Anne—from Anne of Green Gables—was a front-runner. Virginia, an homage to my home. Liesel, Elise, and various other versions of my mother’s name, Lisa. Dolley, derived from my fixation on Dolley Madison. But nothing was clicking.
“To hell with it. Let’s just name her George,” I said.
Jeff lit up. “I was gonna say that yesterday, but I thought you’d hate it!”
“I was gonna say it earlier, but I thought you’d hate it!”
To this day, I still have no idea how we separately and simultaneously arrived at the name George.
Later, while diving into my divine feminist studies, I looked up the area in Spain where I’d lit the votive candles in Barcelona. The patron saint? St. George.
Meanwhile, I hadn’t communicated any of this to the wedding planner in St. Maarten. She kept asking me questions, and I kept putting her off, but she was holding our money and all of our friends’ money and there was a no-returns policy. Our wedding was scheduled for January 4. The baby was due February 11, and while all of this was unfolding, the Zika virus had taken over the island. So once I had the ultrasound, I called the wedding planner and told her we had to cancel. “We’ll do anything we can to help on social media to promote your venue, and you’ve got months to book the rooms, so is there any way we get our money back?”
When I hung up the phone, Jeff said, “I’m out a shit ton of money aren’t I? And all our friends are out thousands of dollars.”
I felt sick about it, but I had to send an email to all our friends. “There’s good news and bad news. Good news is we’re having a girl! Bad news is St. Maarten has Zika. We are so grateful that every single one of you was willing to celebrate our wedding with us. Jeff and I will absolutely cover any costs from the resort that won’t be reimbursed.” I groveled. I felt so horrible.
Without fail, everybody wrote back: baby trumps wedding.
But Jeff was still holding out hope. “Hilarie, we could make it work. I’ve looked into planes to crop dust the entire island of St. Maarten to kill the mosquitoes. We’ll put you in a net; you’ll be fine.”
He so badly wanted this wedding. He had his heart set on it.
But I dug in. “Honey, we’ve tried so long to get pregnant, we aren’t risking anything.”
Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to get married, and I was frustrated that we couldn’t get our money back. But I would’ve paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for a baby. Millions. This baby was priceless. We agreed to go to the island and get married after our baby was born.
Then Hurricane Irma hit, and the island was decimated. The hotel was swept away, and all our intimate misfortunes were thrown into perspective. The hotel wrote to us to say that they would return everyone’s money. They didn’t exist anymore. I’d been so
irritated with them, and now I was heartbroken for them. Life is about constantly changing perspective.
With the wedding canceled and the doctor’s stamp of approval, I finally gave myself permission to daydream about my girl. I didn’t want to deprive myself of joy because I was so scared of losing the baby. Pregnancy with Gus had been stressful because I was a first-time mom and Jeff was always gone, and there were so many logistical issues. So my pregnancy with our daughter was kind of a do-over. Now I had a home. I knew where Jeff was. Our life had a routine. I wanted to move forward and remove all the negative shit. I was very conscious of the fact that I was creating someone else’s cells, I was creating the chemistry of her brain; so if my body was a cauldron of negativity and adrenaline and stress, then it would affect the baby. I devoted myself to serenity. No more Dateline. No more spinning wheels and anxiety. It was gonna be all sunshine and rainbows from that point on.
16
I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy, and free.
—Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
In October 2017 I was lying in bed live-tweeting during my episodes of Lethal Weapon when a tweet caught my eye from @ShaniceBrim, who was talking about Ben Affleck in the aftermath of the news about Harvey Weinstein: He also grabbed Hilarie Burton’s breast on TRL once. Everyone forgot though.
My heart jumped. I couldn’t believe that somebody else remembered that. It had been my own personal grievance, a distant memory that no one mentioned anymore. I felt something akin to shame, that another woman out there had spoken up on my behalf when I’d swept so much of my own shit under the rug so as to not cause a scene.
I didn’t forget, I tweeted back.
@ShaniceBrim wrote me again: I’m so sorry that happened to you. It’s infuriating that people never bring up all the gross, predatory things he’s done.
Seriously, thank you for that. I was a kid, I wrote. Then I found the old video of the incident on the internet. I saw myself laughing and then saying, “Well, he played that card, huh. Ha ha.” Then there was a video of me later saying, “Yeah, I would’ve preferred a high-five.”
I sent @ShaniceBrim that video and said: I had to laugh back then so I wouldn’t cry. Sending love.
I went to bed that night and thought nothing of it. But I woke up to a shit show, as all the #MeToo news shook out. I found myself watching old footage of a nineteen-year-old me trying so hard to laugh off the ugliness of being a girl. By the time the week of chaos and unwanted requests from every news outlet under the sun was over, I was drained. I’d worked in media just long enough to know that none of those outlets really cared about me; they cared about dragging a famous guy through the mud. I let the old footage speak for itself, staying silent and fuming that the real story—the bigger trauma of my years on One Tree Hill—was of interest to no one.
In my youth, being a “good sport” led me down a rabbit hole. I thought I could protect myself by just being “one of the guys,” by laughing at the crude jokes, by sidestepping advances, and by being one of those loud, lippy girls who shrugs off pretty much anything.
So I was the loudest and rough around the edges, and I feigned an “I don’t give a shit” attitude. But in the end I was a young girl who wanted approval and was assaulted anyway.
I never tried to tell the truth to the media after I left One Tree Hill because I believed it was a lost cause. And I was a coward. I had walked away from jobs I loved just to remove myself from toxic situations. I stopped auditioning. I abandoned my childhood dreams of being an actress because playing the game was simply not worth it to me.
I’m so sorry about the girls and young women who have come after me and been traumatized. I’m sorry it took me so long to join the chorus. I’m hopeful for a future when cowards like me will be the exception and not the rule. Because I will be damned if my daughter ever becomes a “good sport.”
That whole confusing week, my daughter kicked and squirmed inside me, making her presence known. She will be here soon. This shit has got to stop.
The timing of all the chaos couldn’t have been worse. I put my head down and got back to work. Animals. Gardens. The nursery. And our second Ghost Stories event. I met Sonia from Astor over at the venue for a walkthrough.
“You doing okay?” she asked me. It was a loaded question. Sonia works with the kids at Astor every day and knows when people are covering their true feelings, denying their vulnerability. Her eyes are twinkly and a tad mischievous, and she has a presence that feels like a warm hug.
“It’s been . . . hard.”
“You must be tired. Just know that because you spoke up, other girls and young women will feel like they can speak up too.” I immediately thought of the girls at Astor—girls who deserved to have their truths and traumas heard and recognized. I couldn’t encourage them to be brave and audacious if I wasn’t willing to do that myself.
“When do you think everything about Mark will come out?” Sophia asked me about the creator of One Tree Hill, Mark Schwahn.
“Beats the hell out of me.”
“But it’s got to, right?”
It had to, but after all the Affleck business, I was weary of being labeled a troublemaker. Mark could be incredibly malicious, and I was afraid to be the one to strike first. But then, one of the writers on the show, whom I had never met, Audrey Wauchope, acknowledged the abusive environment of One Tree Hill through a series of tweets. A fan forwarded Audrey’s tweets to Sophia, Joy Lenz, and me, asking, Hey girls, does any of this ring a bell?
I called Sophia. “Oh fuck, it’s happening.”
I knew that Mark had gone after the actresses, but I had no idea that there had been abuse in the writers’ room. We publicly supported Audrey through Twitter. I cheered her on with Burn it down sis, a catchphrase that became a rallying cry for women who were now ready to name names. On One Tree Hill, Sophia had been the pretty one, Joy the talented one, and I the angry one. But now, I began to realize, we were all angry.
Sophia started a text thread with a large group of the women from the show. Each one of us would bring in another actress or crewmember whom we knew had been hurt by the toxicity of that production. At the suggestion of Daphne Zuniga, eighteen women from the show wrote a joint letter stating that we had all been negatively affected by Mark’s abusive behavior. The letter was direct, polite, angry, but vague; it did not detail specific events. There would have been too many to recount anyway.
E! News wouldn’t cover the story because Mark’s current show, The Royals, was on the E! network. They had done multiple articles on Ben Affleck groping me for one second almost twenty years before, but when a multitude of women were coming forward about years of abuse from the showrunner whose series was on their network, not a peep.
Nothing was done. Mark Schwahn wasn’t fired. Then, the women from The Royals wrote a letter, and the lead actress made a personal statement. He was put on probation. But the media didn’t care—not without gory details.
Variety needed specifics that could be backed up. Our text chain of women from One Tree Hill was on fire. Many of us wanted to talk, to tell the full, unexpurgated truth, but that idea was as frightening as it was liberating. When our letter didn’t get the traction it needed, I wrote to the group:
You guys, we can’t be vague. They want the shitty details; otherwise, they’ll think we’re being dramatic.
We knew some of us were going to have to bite the bullet. A series of responses followed:
Yes.
Let’s do it.
Talk to them Hilarie, and then I’ll do it the next day.
So I spilled my guts to Daniel Holloway at Variety; I talked to him for five hours. Danneel Ackles bravely detailed her abuse. Daniel’s horror listening to our story validated so much of what I’d felt. And worse had happened to other women. But when he tried to follow up with some of those others, they were reprimanded by their management firms, their publicists, and their agents and told that doing this was career suicide. Some of th
em called me in tears, saying, “I’m so sorry—I hope you don’t think less of me.”
I looked around at my life and thought, If I never work on another show or film, I’ll be okay. Mischief Farm was in the middle of its full autumn display, similar to the way it had looked when we’d seen it for the first time. This is real, I thought. This is who I am.
The farm. Samuel’s Sweet Shop. Astor. The community. My children. Jeffrey.
This is what matters.
There is a moment of absolute freedom when you realize that the things that used to scare you have no power over you anymore. I had the freedom to tell the truth.
My daughter had steeled me. I was a farmer. A shop owner. A soccer mom. A board member at Astor. I was finally a person that I sorta kinda liked, and all the creeps out there could go straight to hell.
By the end of the year, Mark Schwahn had been fired.
17
Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.
—Thornton Wilder, Our Town
George was a hyperactive baby, even in the womb. For all my wishing that I could get pregnant, actually being pregnant was much harder than I remembered. I was also almost a decade older. But that girl jumped and kicked and danced with such fervor that Gus would watch my rolling belly in horror. “Is that normal?” he’d ask.
I was convinced she was coming early. I began having Braxton-Hicks contractions toward the end of January. Sharagim had helped me find a wonderful midwife who worked through the hospital, so just like when I had Gus, I would have all the safety nets of a hospital at my disposal but the personal empowerment of natural birth. Nancey Rosensweig, an Ivy League–educated midwife with children of her own, brought a great deal of compassion to my healthcare. We met in my home, where she nursed the whole of me and looked after my mental health and my worries about having a healthy baby. She gave great advice regarding Gus and how to keep him involved and a priority. She brought me food and natural homeopathic remedies to ease my aches and pains and heartburn. Oh Lord, never in my life had I experienced such heartburn.
The Rural Diaries Page 19