What Tituss Burgess Can’t Live Without

So I’m always on a diet, and my Achilles’ heel is pasta. I can’t stand zoodles. They don’t taste anything like spaghetti. So I was looking for a replacement and a friend of mine told me about these tofu noodles, and I was like, “Okay, here we go,” but they were actually really good. They’re made of tofu and are low-carb, and they actually do taste like noodles. They may be a hair chewy, though. You can’t eat them and expect them to be exactly like spaghetti, but for me it works.

Music is everything. I call music moments the intermissions of life — I often want ear nourishment. This little speaker gets so loud for how tiny it is. I can travel with it, too. I basically bring my house with me everywhere.

I’m always hot. Even in winter I keep my air conditioner on. I don’t know what it is, but being from the South, my body temperature runs hot. When I go to bed, I can’t sleep unless it’s freezing, so when I travel, I usually pack one of these mini-fans, but this one time I forgot. So I went to Walgreens and asked one of the employees if they had fans, and he said, “I don’t think so.” And I was like, This idiot isn’t even checking. I hate when someone at the store says they think something when I ask a question. I want you to know! So I actually found this one myself, and it’s so gorgeous and creates so much wind.

In the winter, it’s obviously super cold in New York, and I’m always having dinner parties outdoors and hosting guests, so I told my assistant, “Can you find one of those heaters like in restaurants?” And now it just makes for the most delicious outdoor parties. It puts out so much heat. Sometimes I’ll just sit outside under it with a blanket and read a book.

Okay, so because I like things so cold, sometimes I wake up with a slightly swollen throat or a runny nose. Growing up, at the first hint of a cold, my grandmother would slather her grandchildren in Vicks. You’d get it even if you didn’t have a cold — by proximity you had to be slathered — and now I never go anywhere without it. I know it works. It opens everything up and gets the passages nice and clean.

Listen. Crystal Light is everything. For those of us who are always dieting, it makes you feel like you’re cheating. I don’t know why the rest of the world isn’t onboard. It’s so good. My best friend Heather turned me onto it. I’ll bring the little plastic packets everywhere I go — that and the Vicks.

I love scented candles; I love putting potpourri out in the winter. I also have two dogs and need to make sure my home is nice and fresh. So I’ll go to my 99 Cent Store and stock up on these Air Wick Freshmatic fresheners, and it’s delish. I love the fresh linen scent.

They say it’s bad for you. I don’t know. I suppose any artificial sweetener is. But I don’t like sugar. I don’t like stevia. I can’t stand Splenda. But I also love iced tea — you don’t get sweet tea, you should make it sweet yourself. So now when I order iced tea, if they don’t have Sweet’N Low, I will drink water.

So my grandmother and mom were the cooks in the family, and there was no kitchen that I walked into among my aunts and uncles that didn’t have a cast-iron skillet. You can bake in it, you can fry in it, you can sauté things in it. And it sort of retains the flavor — that’s not to say you don’t wash it, but it retains the seasoning of the past meals. It’s such a southern thing. And you don’t ever have to throw it out and get a new one.

I despise doing laundry. And when I say despise, I mean that I will go out of my way to not do it. But once I got ahold of that little bottle and those little sprinkles, that was it. [Editor’s note: Burgess has appeared in Unstopables commercials.] They smell incredible, and the scent lasts as long as they say they last. It makes it so fun to do laundry now that I will go to my basement and find things to wash.