Hannah Selinger makes a case for diffusers in every room...
And four other things the James Beard Award-nominated writer loves right now.
Each month, I ask an author I love to share five recommendations they have for other writers, whatever is the wind beneath their wings when they sit down to write. This month I reached out to Hannah Selinger, whose hot new memoir, Cellar Rat: My Life in the Restaurant Underbelly, was published just last week!
She’s a James Beard Award-nominated lifestyle writer and mother of two based in Boxford, MA. Her print and digital work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Eater, Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and elsewhere. Her 2021 Bon Appétit essay, “In My Childhood Kitchen, I Learned Both Fear and Love,” is anthologized in the 2022 Best American Food Writing collection, published by HarperCollins and edited by Sohla El-Waylly. Visit her website or find her on Instagram at @druishamericanprincess.
So without further ado I’m handing the metaphorical microphone over to Hannah!
My friend Helen introduced me to Nablus, a buttery, rich, cold-pressed olive oil that comes from 500-year-old Palestinian olive groves. No offense to the other zeitgeisty olive oils that keep getting shoved down my throat (or maybe some offense to them, I guess), but this is the olive oil that I've been using of late as a finishing oil. In my capacity as a food writer, I get to taste a lot of different products, and this is definitely one of my favorites. (Apologies if this olive oil is backordered, but honestly, I love to see it.)
Not too long ago, my husband came home from a work trip with a pair of shearling-lined Birkenstocks. He's a recovering Republican who now drives around our extremely liberal state listening to NPR in... Birkenstock mules. I took one look at those weird shoes and thought: but make it fashion. It turns out that Tory Burch makes the Mellow Mule in four colorways, which is how I ended up on an email thread with the Burlington Mall Tory Burch store, debating whether I needed them in River Rock or Ocean (in the end, I went with a more neutral palette). The point here is that these are really comfortable and that no, suede clog-mule-90s-era shoes will never go out of style, or not while I'm still standing. If you doubt my sense of personal style, I'd just like to point out here that, for no particular reason, I'm regularly quoted as a person with "taste" in The Strategist.
I'm an unabashed diffuser obsessive. I have diffusers in every room of my house: family room, powder room, primary bathroom, guest bathroom, office. If there is a table, I will find a place for a diffuser. Just you watch. A few years ago, a family member gifted me a diffuser from Farm + Sea, a brand local to me: they're based in Amesbury, Massachusetts, one town over from where I grew up. I'm now what fast-food companies might refer to as a "heavy user"; I re-up my supply--specifically of the Salt Air scent in non-denominational months and the Citrus + Balsam scent in holiday months--whenever I'm running low.
Anyone who knows me knows that what I love more than anything--more than my friends and family--is candy. I wish I could explain why I have not had more cavities, but there isn't a good explanation for it. I definitely don't deserve this good fortune. In November, a few friends of mine opened a store a few towns over, where I can buy vintage candy to satisfy my cravings, the most satisfying of which is an extra-long Charleston Chew bar. If you've ever suffered from writer's block, may I suggest gnawing on a chocolate-cloaked stick of marshmallow? I have unlocked secrets untold this way, dentistry be damned.
And, finally, this tiny lamp is one of my favorite things. Really! I wake up around 5 every morning, partly by choice and partly just because I am one of those annoying people who always does things early. I cannot help this. I have always been this way. My office is dark. It is color-drenched in a very dark blue that is almost black, and my overhead lighting isn't on a dimmer and, for some reason that I don't really understand, we can't put it on one. The blinding light in my office felt nearly unbearable. Also, maybe I had fallen down the rabbit hole of watching too many ASMR Instagram videos of influencers with Very Nice Kitchens and Very Lovely Portable Soft-Lit Lamps. Whatever the case, I will concede that my early-morning working life has been much more serene ever since I introduced soft lighting into the mix. You should get one of these, and no, this isn't an #ad.
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