Free Recipe for Disaster by Stacey Ballis

Italian beef “dipped,” meaning that the whole sandwich, once assembled, is grasped gently between tongs and completely submerged briefly in the vat of jus. This results in a sandwich that isn’t just moist, it’s decadently squooshy, in a way that sends rivulets of salty meaty juice down your arm when you eat.
    This is the sandwich that necessitated the invention of the Chicago Sandwich Stance, a method of eating with your elbows resting on your dining surface, leaning over to hopefully save shirtfronts and ties from a horrible meaty baptism. Dipped Italian beef sandwiches in Chicago require a full commitment. Once you start, you are all in till the last bit of smushy bread and shred of spicy beef is gone. It requires that beverages have straws and proximity. Because if you try to stop midway, to pop in a French fry, or pick up a cup, the whole thing will disintegrate before your very eyes. You can lean over to sip something as long as you don’t let go of your grasp on the sandwich. Fries are saved for dessert.
    Most people wouldn’t suspect how good iced coffee would be with Italian beef and French fries, but it is genius. My personal genius. Bringing sweet and bitter and cold to the hot, salty umami bomb of the sandwich and the crispy fries—insanely good. You may borrow it if you like. I also like hot coffee with potato chips in the morning. Do not judge me.
    I check my watch. I have a good four hours to work before I have to head home to shower for the girls. I pull my ragged legal pad of notes over and look for a small project, something I can complete. I won’t be back here for at least a week, maybe longer. The Manning job will start full throttle on Monday, and that will mean long days of meeting with subs, and long nights generating budgets and lists of tasks, and there will be nothing left of me to bring here. I spot, way down on the second page, a small note.
Pantry shelves-lip-chalk
. I had seen a gorgeous pantry online where each shelf had a decorative strip of wood creating an inch-high lip, just high enough to prevent canned goods and other items from accidentally sliding off the shelf when caught with an elbow or moved aside to reach for something in the back. Having had many pantry accidents myself over the years, including dumping over an opened five-pound sack of flour, shattering a bottle of molasses, and upending a large jar of rice, I know the magic of this simple idea. And I’ve gone it one better. My idea is to paint the strips with chalkboard paint. Everyone and their brother is going full-on Martha in their pantries these days, with matching jars and containers, custom labels and expensive organization systems. This will feed right into that Pinterest-driven passion, allowing the homeowners to organize however they like and label the shelves themselves if they choose. And if they aren’t part of the cult of pantry, the matte charcoal will still be a lovely design element.
    It takes me less than a half an hour to paint the wood strips. I take an hour to go over my lists, cleaning up some items I’ve either finished or rethought, and making a new list of the things it makes the most sense to tackle next, and what sort of supplies and materials I will need on hand. By the time I’m done, the strips are dry, and I measure all the shelves in the pantry and use a small Japanese pull saw in my miter box to create the necessary cuts. I’m allergic to butt joints; that sloppy look of two pieces of wood just slapped up next to each other makes my skin crawl. I like a clean cut, a mitered corner, a dovetailed joint. I glue and clamp the pieces to the edges of the shelves one at a time, tacking them in with finishing nails. I’ll come back after the glue is set to put a tiny bit of filler in the little nail holes and touch up the paint. But for all intents and purposes, the project is done, with ten minutes to spare. I know it is something of a cop-out; the kitchen is so close to fully complete,