Maybe it’s a DNIAD. Do-nothing-in-a-day. I’m down with that.
I’d love to whip up some munchies and sit back and watch our combined efforts miraculously come to naught. Except I’d have to make the munchies the day before, I guess. Because do-nothing. Duh. Um, and eat them the day before too. Wait, even watching is doing something. Sleep, that’s the answer. 24 hours of sleep. I’ve been needing a catch-up anyway on that. Sign me up!
gr
P.S. And yes, I do sleep amazingly.
Everyone has excellent answers. If it’s still NiaD, I’m in!
Musical in a day
Screenplay in a day
Recipe book in a day
Joke book in a day
Yellow pages in a day
Incriminating classified document dump in a day
…
As tempting as YellowPages-in-a-Day is, we’ve settled on COOKBOOK-in-a-Day instead! Details in an updated first post in this thread!
Every year I have wagered with my sweetheart (and lost) on what will be the genre of the NIAD. With this special summer –IAD, I sort of nailed it, you know? Does that count as a win?
Cook a meal in a day, you say? I am setting my kitchen timer. Count me in.
I kidded you not. I really will be ensconced in a cottage on the rocky coast of somewhere, so that lends a certain amount of interest and rustic constraint on what can be done. Challenge accepted!
Someone once told me I rock when it comes to cooking a frozen pizza.
If you have a story to tell about how frozen pizza saved your life, got you through college, or was the reason you got married / divorced / became an aerospace engineer… then I’m excited to read it!
@gr @homeport @Khannah @pacifika @pete340 @Susan67 @thegirlclaudia I’ve added you to the list in the second post based on your enthusiastic acceptance! If there is a recipe you want to ‘snag’ let me know and we’ll add it to the sign up sheet.
Everyone else – Sign up here! And start telling everyone about it!
(note - I’ve only taken what I’ve interpretted as ‘firm confirmation’ from earlier posts as signing up, given that you wouldn’t have known quite what you were signing up for!)
For easy sharing, you can use the following shorturl to get to this forum thread: bit.ly/cookbookinaday
Awesome I will send a recipe once I have thought about it thank you
Really? You didn’t consider my post as a violent assault demanding to be included? Just to be clear …
PLEASE CONSIDER MY PARTICIPATION AS MANDATORY TO MY HAPPINESS
I almost choked on my vomit laughing out loud at the shiny new title of this forum thread!!! Feel free to try YellowPages-in-a-Day sometime in the future — we might sow our words in tears 
Plenty of recipes on my hard drive. Fewer in my head. Need to pick a nice one for Yellow Day. Oh and did you know that the 14th of every month is a type of Valentine’s Day? So I still get to scratch my YellowPages-In-A-Day itch. Tee hee. (By the way, these dates are not exclusively Korean; they’re also recognised in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan and other East Asian locations as well.)
@pigfender Tentatively I’d like to put in an appetiser recipe of sautéed beet greens, although that may change on the day if I run out of beet greens. For freshness, I can only cook them within 2 days of purchase, and the beets only come by every 3-4 days. Hard to say whether I can confirm this as my CiaD recipe. Keeping my fingers crossed. I think I should also mention that the same procedures in the recipe also work if beet greens are replaced with Swiss chard, which may come with yellow stems. Mm.
thegirlclaudia - sauteéd beet greens appetiser
P.S. I still remember the forum post years ago where Cookbook-in-a-Day was first suggested by one of us
I am not cook enough for this project, but I’ll be watching from the sidelines as it comes together.
I get a daily email from the Atlas Obscura website, and today’s email included a link to a 3-part writing seminar they’re doing on recipe writing.
I found the timing amusing and thought I’d drop the link here.
I’m in! Will be cooking Thai/Chinese “Pork with Peppers”.
Mark
Does that mean we’re going to get barbecued killer-space-dolphin steaks?
Mr X
No. That was forbidden. I’m on the fence about just my personal collard greens recipe or bringing in some of my shrimp into play. Then again I can go get some fresh crabs or a flounder (like a turbot) or some speckled trout or a redfish or three. Now my buddy is parking his boat here so maybe God’s seafood store can be convinced to part with some sheepshead or a couple yellow tail or a grouper or a cobia or even a couple snappers. I’m also unsure if my recipe(s) should include the prerequisite recipes used to acquire bait, to repurpose “waste” into additional meat or even how to make use of hurricane fall to provide the heat needed for a family dinner (including breads).
I’ve spent a few years rediscovering some traditional techniques that reduce the dependence on “modern methods and equipment”. I’m not up to making my own hooks and line but I do my best to avoid waste and impact. Luckily, I have access to folks that are willing to trade their wares for fresh fish.
Go for some seafood recipe!
By the way, in Xiamen I loved the 皇帝鱼 (“Emperor fish”, i.e. Pacific Flounder, rather expensive) but by the time I left, it had been replaced as my most ordered fish by turbot, which a man I met from the University of Aberystwyth had taught the Chinese how to farm … it was significantly cheaper.
Mr X
You may be slightly underwhelmed by my seafood recipes. And I will blame a wonderful Chinese immigrant for my underwhelming flavoring. Here’s the short story.
In my less affluent days (I’m not affluent by most measures but I have more than most of the worlds 8b inhabitants) the local “hole in the wall” Chinese takeout was our splurge. One day a new family was there next to the old family. The establishment was changing hands. The old owners instructed the new owners that “He eats everything! Pretty wife and kids! He doesn’t bite. Try things on him.” I’m not sure I needed to be present for this exact conversation, but that was how I met Dou Lu. Over next year we struck up a friendship of sorts. He would literally invite us to share his family table at times. In one of those shared meals he asked me why Americans hate the flavor of our food and cover it with so much sauce. I had to think on it for a minute. In all the meals I shared with him, there were none of the heavy, over seasoned, Americanized dishes. Each dish was simple, easy to make, and lightly seasoned. It was an eye opener.
Fast forward to a trip to London where I had the privilege of dining in a number of unique places. Then back to New York City, Charleston, SC and Savannah, GA, San Fransisco CA, Seattle WA, Portland OR. I realized that the best foods used the least seasoning (for the most part). I started looking at the way I was preparing my harvests (plant and animal) and realized I had no idea what things actually tasted like.
At that moment I started to rethink how I prepared my meals. If I’m going to kill a fish, a bird or a mammal for food then I owe that creature the respect of being the predominant feature of my meal. This means that my seasoning choice can never cover the fishiness or or the gaminess of the meat. Same with veggies… what’s the point of eating eggplant if you can’t taste the actual eggplant because of the breading and seasoning?
Anywho… my buddy Adam (the guy with the offshore boat) has authorized a quote: It is boring to watch you cook because you do so little, but daaaang! (This was said after I loaded a chicken, a couple onions, some garlic with a few spices into a Dutch oven, set it in a leaf pile then lit the leaves on fire… when we were done with the raking, dinner was ready!)
Prepare to be underwhelmed!
Actually, I’m with you all the way, and so is the GLW!
Another two tacks on the Chinese:
Our daughter, Fiona, and then boyfriend Matt, together with GLW came to China over Christmas the year I started work there. Matt, who never ate vegetables — memories of school cabbage which was put on to boil at 9 so it would be ready for lunch at 12:30! — was tucking into all the vegetables on the table … it was the light touch in the cooking!
On the other side of the scale, a former student, who is like a member of the family, came to the UK with her mother-in-law (both from Guangzhou/Canton) and stayed with us in Exeter. On the first evening, we had plain, steamed spring greens, with just a sprinkling of sea salt, with dinner. She was totally amazed, as the Chinese always cook their vegetables in a (minimal) sauce. She loved them so much she wanted them with every meal, including breakfast!
Mr X
Are we allowed food coloring ?
Not sure why we wouldn’t be allowed to color our food. We are encouraged to color our language… Only seems fair to extend it to the food…
