This month at Shondaland, we’re celebrating once again what the holidays mean to all with our Food, Family, and Traditions series. These snapshots and vignettes from many of our beloved Shondaland stars, pals, and fans festively affirm the importance of communities both big and small coming together to celebrate.
Many years before her starring roles on Inventing Anna and Grey’s Anatomy, Alexis Floyd spent her childhood holidays amid, as she remembers it, magic. Not only did the budding actress help bring to life one of the season’s most treasured Christmas stories, The Nutcracker, but Floyd and her brother would also be whisked away to a place that, in a child’s eye, felt like a far-off wonderland only accessible by something mystical. In reality, this was the North Pole Adventure, a yearly Christmas experience on Ohio’s Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad in which kids of all ages board a transformed holiday train, enjoy hot cocoa and cookies, and write letters to Santa, all before arriving at the Big Man’s holiday workshop. For Floyd, it felt like true magic in the making, an experience that she revisits here through the eyes of her childhood self as she and her brother made their annual visit to a dream actually come true.
Leaping from our metal school desks at 3:15 p.m. the Friday before Christmas was the rush of the year. I was off to a final rehearsal for the Cleveland Ballet’s annual and much-anticipated production of The Nutcracker, where I could be spotted dancing as a mouse, a soldier, and an angel. But then came the time, usually the evening of my birthday on December 22, when my brother, Aric, and I hung up the work, surrendered to the snow, and softened into the children we were and always would be.
We would slip into our onesies, climb into the back of Mom’s minivan (what about it is “mini”? I always wondered), and prepared for takeoff aboard the Polar Express, a magical holiday experience where we got to board a real train.
We drove for no more than 30 minutes to a neighboring town, but my family was transported to a timeless, spaceless land where magic was more real than the moon.
We were handed hot chocolate with blissfully bobbing marshmallows upon arrival and escorted by whimsical elves to our seats on the train. The train left the station, the songs leaped from our hearts, and we sang, snacked, and delighted our way to the one and only North Pole. Aric and I greeted a jolly Santa, double-checked he got our Christmas wishes just right, and before too long, we were returned to our minivan to sleep our way home while dad navigated the flurries of snow. It was, and remains, a dream come true.
Alexis Floyd’s family mac and cheese recipe
Ingredients:
- Small box of elbow macaroni (Muellers 1 lb box)
- 1 8 oz can Carnation evaporated milk
- 1 80z block of Velveeta cheese
- 1/2 lb Townhouse crackers
- Mild Colby cheese (slices are easier)
- 1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
- 1 cup shredded "gourmet" mild cheddar cheese
- I cup shredded "gourmet" shredded Swiss cheese
- 1 1/2 sicks Parkay margarine
Instructions:
- Boil macaroni with half teaspoon of salt.
- Pour evaporated milk in small saucepan, cut Velveeta block in small chunks, add to saucepan, and heat over low temperature.
- When it is a creamy sauce, cover and remove from stove.
- Take butter and melt it down completely. Take two full packs of Townhouse crackers and crush. Add melted butter to crackers in a large bowl. Stir until moist. Set aside.
- By now macaroni should be ready, but do not overcook. Do not rise, drain only. Using a large casserole or, preferably, a lasagna dish, put half of the macaroni in bottom, add sharp cheddar evenly, then add slices of Colby to completely cover sharp cheddar.
- Add mixture of evaporated milk over the top of the Colby (about a third of the complete supply), take a third of cracker mixture and put over Velveeta.
- Pour in remaining macaroni. Next add half of gourmet mild cheddar, then add half o the Swiss, last half of the mild cheddar, last half of the Swiss (sprinkle over as evenly as possible).
- Pour remaining Velveeta mixture in carefully. Let sit about 1 minute.
- Take remaining cracker mixture and place on top evenly. Let sit about 3 minutes.
- Bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes. Careful, crackers on top should not get too brown.
The most important thing to remember is to not burn the Velveeta and Carnation milk mixture. Do not warm it in microwave. (Milk will boil before the cheese melts.)
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