I was 16 in the year 2000, and had just discovered food as culture with a capital C; I was in a pretentious phase about it then. This was the absolute pinnacle of sophistication to me, and it’s still a damn fine sandwich.
I spent some time combing food section archives for trends from the era generally accepted as Y2K (1997-9/11) for this challenge, then decided to do a portable meal we could have before a show tonight; luckily the era’s most repeated ingredients lend themselves well to sandwiching (on Italian bread, which was a big deal to me at the time; I was too cool for the challah and rye of my childhood for a good six months). Also, it’s becoming clear that every era has its preferred source of umami and for this one, it was sun-dried tomato.

My camera had a hard time accurately capturing this abomination, but it was VERY blue.

The year was 2003 or 2004. I actually did make boxed mac and cheese with the squeezable butter (we bought the blue one). This version had to make due with food coloring instead. Topped with waffle cut chips.

For this theme I knew I had to make a dish from the quintessential turn-of-the-century classic (and possibly best TV show of all time), Futurama! I took two stabs at the Food-o-Mat amoeba, but couldn’t get it quite right. This was my backup plan, it turned out pretty good though!

Hermes’ jerk prunes are from this scene in S03E04: Parasites Lost. They don’t explain what the ingredients are or how to prepare them, so I just made this up. My version is dried prunes, red onion, and red bell pepper cooked in Ting a Ling Jamaican Jerk Sauce (I had never tried it before this, but it was so good I already made two other dishes with it and used the whole bottle) all served over rice.

The prunes were fine, but they could have used some more saltiness to counter how sweet they were. Or maybe the whole dish was actually really nasty, but anything tastes good if you put that sauce on it, just like Helmut Spargle’s Essence of Pure Flavor?

For the record, I suffered no cartoonish Drano-like effects from eating this.

Here’s more pictures.

For this week's challenge, I velveted shrimp before folding them into a creamy Alfredo primavera.

The shrimp were served over bucatini with a variety of sautéed summer vegetables, including zucchini, yellow squash, mushrooms, asparagus, and shallots. All tossed in a garlic-Parmesan Alfredo sauce. The dish was finished with fresh basil, additional Parmesan, and toasted garlic bread. It was delicious!

🍤🧄🧀🌿