12 Things That Delighted Us Last Week: From Spicy Jam to Magnesium Spray

Strategist contributor Diksha Basu has tried everything from sleepy-time teas to kava to improve her sleep quality. She was met with only restless nights until she took a chance on this magnesium oil, which she sprays on the soles of her feet before going to bed. “Apparently, topical treatments are most effective when sprayed somewhere you have a lot of sweat glands, where your skin is the most porous,” she writes. “Ever since starting this spray, I manage to fall asleep (usually within 20 minutes) and stay asleep.”

“As long as I can remember, I’ve loved a thick moisturizer,” writes senior editor Hilary Reid. Over the years, she’s cycled through Drunk Elephant’s Lala Retro Whipped Cream Moisturizer, La Roche-Posay’s Cicaplast Balm B5, and CeraVe’s Moisturizing Cream, but her new prescription retinol led her to try “the moisturizer to end all moisturizers,” as Rio calls it: an omega-rich one from Sofie Pavitt. “Over the many times I’ve used thick moisturizers, I’ve had some cause tiny clogged pores, others cause breakouts, and some kick off perioral dermatitis,” Reid writes. “This one simply sinks into my skin and keeps it moisturized all day.”

For Strategist writer and former shoe designer Martha Tuber, a classic, high-quality loafer is everything she wants in a shoe: fashionable, functional, comfortable, and unfussy. But of the 20 pairs in her collection, this pair from G.H.Bass, she says, is the only pair you actually need. (She owns five of them herself.) “They have a flatteringly low profile and a perfectly balanced almond-toe shape” she writes. “And while they’re technically not waterproof, I do have a ten-year-old box-leather pair that’s spent many days trudging through soaking rain.”

The trifecta behind content creator Jake Shane’s ideal bed setup includes an indulgently soft Lola blanket, a set of silky bamboo sheets from Cozy Earth, and this smart mattress cover from Eight Sleep that sends him a sleep-fitness score every morning. That’s all after he’s customized it to his sleep preferences: “It puts me to bed cold and wakes me up warm. If you have a partner, each side of the bed can be different temperatures. You can also set a body alarm so the entire thing wakes you up with vibrations.”

To get the juices flowing on the important Halloween questions (as in what treats to give out, costumes to consider, and baskets to buy), a coven of Strategist parents got together to swap ideas. Along with going to Zara for candy baskets and HMart for candy, they suggest giving out light-up tchotchkes, like these mini-flashlights, to help the kids walk around safely. “Glow sticks would also be a good option,” adds senior editor Winnie Yang.

“When I found out Inna, my favorite jam brand, will be closing down by the end of the year, I asked myself this question: How much jam is too much jam to hoard in my pantry?” says our writer Dominique Pariso. Though she already bought seven jars of this spicy chili jam after finding out Yang had purchased a dozen, Pariso’s September Strategist Haul submission included three more jars. Perhaps the answer to her question is no more than ten.

Until Strategist senior writer Lauren Ro discovered you could buy cropped Levi’s, she thought her ideal jean — “non-stretch jeans that were straight but not too slim or too wide, with a finished hem in a length that hit right below my ankles” — only existed secondhand. Now, she finds the brand’s 501 Cropped Originals with a 28-inch inseam are the perfect “throw-them-on-for-whatever-situation jeans” for her five-foot-two frame. “And in a few years, I’ll have worn them so much that they’ll turn vintage on their own,” she adds.

Strategist writer Erin Schwartz was once charmed by the idea of clean, chic, and label-free spice jars, but “months of dumping cayenne into eggs in place of paprika and forgetting the identity of a seasoning we nicknamed ‘scary spice’” changed their mind. Now, thanks to the Brother handheld P-Touch label-maker, they know exactly what every container in their apartment holds straight down to the “Yuzu Bitters” in their fridge to “Screws & Nails” in their closet.

When Quince entered the wellness and supplements space earlier this year, Strategist writer Brenley Goertzen was skeptical, sure, but set out to test its range of electrolytes packets, plant-based proteins, grass-fed collagens, and more. Among the supplements she deemed worthy of a repurchase was this vanilla-flavored, plant-based protein powder. “I was pleasantly surprised by how easily it dissolved and how smooth it tasted as I drank it,” she reports. “There was virtually no chalkiness, and because the powder is sweetened with monk-fruit extract, it’s free from added sugar, stevia, and sugar alcohols.”

[Editor’s note: The vanilla-bean flavor is currently sold out, but the chocolate is still available here.]

For the latest installment of our series “Beauty Aisle,” we got a peak at the beauty products esthetician and laser-hair-removal expert Liliya Novozhylova buys at the drugstore. Along with some blue mascara from Kiko for herself, she’ll pick up some posttreatment remedies, including this anti-itch cream. “Itchiness, bumpiness, and redness can happen. It’s almost like a slight sunburn,” she says. “This helps with all that instantly.”

Back in 2013, our deals writer Sam Daly was searching for a simple, elegant jewelry organizer with lots of dividers. And so, she went exactly where any “millennial teen who’s looking for something cool” would go in the 2010s, Urban Outfitters, and picked up what her 18-year-old self would describe as a rather sophisticated and vintage-y jewelry box. Twelve years later, she’s still using the organizer, which, she says, “Still feels timeless and fits in seamlessly with my interior-design style.” Better yet, “There is virtually no wear on it, either,” she adds.

As the father of four kids, Jason Blum has counted on this crêpe pan the past decade to make everything from whole-wheat crêpes to chocolate-chips pancakes. (“I fit five pancakes on this pan. It’s extraordinary,” he says.) Weekends, though, are the real test: “I will still make a big crêpe batter, especially if my kids have friends over. I’ll turn out 30 crêpes. It takes a while though,” he told us.