Chandra Malai Kofta, Seitan and broccoli with pantry bbq sauce, Peanut butter chocolate chip bars

It's week 17 and my "to be cooked" list is 20% desserts. Part of me is considering picking a few to make for church this weekend and just rolling in like I opened a bakery. One is a bread pudding which I have never made but always watch people make on Chopped!

Here's what I made this week:

• Chandra malai kofta

• Seitan and broccoli with pantry bbq sauce

  • Simmered seitan

• Peanut butter chocolate chip bars

Chandra malai kofta

My kofta slowly falling apart

• I would make this again (with some tweaks)

• I made 1 modification

• I think this would freeze well, and it makes a TON of sauce

My one modification on this recipe, no surprise, is that I did not use cumin in the koftas. Instead, I used whole mustard seed. I was feeling really optimistic that the koftas would hold together in the frying pan, but as soon as they warmed up they lost their shape. Bummer.

It's a testament to how good the flavors are in this recipe that I didn't mind one bit. In the future, I think I would try air frying them to see if they would keep their shape, or trying a bit of flax seed or other egg replacer to bind them together a bit more.

The sauce on this is really delicious and it makes a substantial amount which you will not be mad about. It's super creamy with both cashew cream and coconut milk.

Seitan and broccoli with pantry bbq sauce (with simmered seitan)

Homemade seitan

• I would probably not make this again

• I made 0 modifications

• You can freeze this

Oh, seitan, you weird and wonderful vegan protein. The main ingredient in seitan is vital wheat gluten, and it's used in all kinds of faux meats. Earlier this year for this project I made the steamy beany sausages, and those were great. This simmered seitan on the other hand looked like brains in a bowl.

I mean, it tasted fine, and did still have a better texture I think than the store bought seitan available by me (it's squeaky when you eat it) but it's not my favorite.

I also am a pretty loyal Sweet Baby Ray's bbq sauce lover, so I've never really felt called to this recipe. The sauce here uses peanut butter in it which Isa says in the notes you shouldn't really be able to taste, but I did (I am also of course biased because I saw myself put it into the sauce...).

The recommendation is to serve this over mashed potatoes or rice. I ended up mostly having it as a plate with mac and cheese on the side and that was fun! I did also top it with a little Sweet Baby Rays.

Peanut butter chocolate chip bars

Flaky salt makes it "adult"

• I would definitely make this again

• I made 0 modifications

• You can freeze this

These are delicious and a recipe that I think kids would love! I think in the future I would probably just double it to use an entire 9x12 baking pan and freeze or give away any extras.

Because I still don't have an 8 inch square baking pan, I just used my big one and created a "wall" with the parchment to make it a bit smaller. I also topped half with some big flaky salt.

This is so much better than the chewy bars of my childhood! This recipe does use a somewhat hard to find ingredient, which is brown rice syrup. This is in pretty much every commercial snack bar on the planet, but for us regular consumers, I've only ever found it at Whole Foods.

Weekly reflection

I have made almost 60 new recipes this year so far through this project alone. My "to be cooked" list is getting smaller each week. And how I do love to check things off a list.

I recently interviewed an HR practitioner about the use of AI for work, and one of the things she talked about was how it may take away some of the thrill we get from checking things off a list. If AI can get things done faster or more efficiently, then our to-do list gets shorter, and for those of us that love a checklist, this can actually be hard.

It really resonated with me, because in addition to being a checklister, my early years of employment were shaped by the hustle culture of startups in San Francisco. So many big brands today (Uber, Instacart, you name it) were just starting up when I landed in the Bay Area. The feeling of being "productive" from getting things done is so ingrained in me that even now, when I'm not working a full time job, I have this need to give myself things to do so that I can cross them off.

In some ways I do think it helps me, because I can get whatever thought pops up in my head out of my mind and onto a list to think about or address later. And in other ways it feels like I am just staying on the productivity escalator, putting one foot in front of the other because it "feels right."

Whether I was doing this project or not, I'd still be cooking at home (girl gotta eat) so the checklist and structure here feels supportive, not restrictive. That said, I did recently make a change in how I use my Todoist app (a checklist you can use on your phone/laptop) to have a sort of "drop zone" project called "just thoughts" instead of always scheduling things for myself.

For example, one of the tasks in my "just thoughts" project is to make a new set of curtains for my living room. In the past, I would have put this on my schedule right away for a time I thought made sense. Then if I got busy or other things came up, instead of rescheduling it, I'd feel pressure to sit down and make the curtains because it was on my schedule, dammit!

It's been six months since I was laid off, and I think I found a lot of comfort in keeping a schedule, especially in the beginning. The feeling of "being busy" equated to "being productive" and that led to "being happy" which has always felt like such a simple formula to lose myself in.

The HR practitioner I spoke with about AI said that once our checklist gets smaller, then we have to focus on other work that we didn't really like having to deal with. In my world, this means really investigating for myself what type of employment feels right (and balancing that with the need to make money to provide for myself) while also giving myself time to step off the productivity escalator for a bit.

While I want to give myself more task-related freedom, I think I'll always be a checklister in some form. In college, someone once laughed that I had"remove nail polish" on my to-do list. For me, if I didn't write it down, I wasn't sure it would be getting done.

I think my recent checklist-shift is about allowing myself more freedom, while keeping the familiarity of a process that has given me success in both my personal and professional life. And at the end of the day, what I love more than checking things off a list is doing the actual thing. Cooking, crafting, writing postcards to my sister's kids.

When I finish cooking through Isa Does It, will I delight in seeing my logbook of recipes 100% complete? Of course. Will that thrill taste as good as the Almondine cookies on page 295? Not a chance.