Laundry and Cooking in Italy

So while I am enjoying my time in Prague (it's probably very cold right now), I thought I'd post about some general questions I had about living in Rome. Two questions specifically: laundry and food. Yes, I know that wasn't actually in question form.

What do I do about laundry?
Well most of the time I ship back to my mom who does it for me. No silly, we have a washing machine. There are washing machines in Europe--this isn't Mars. However, we don't have a dryer, which is somewhat of a pain when it comes to drying my pants or towels. But I make do. It takes a little more than an hour for the washing cycle. The machine also hold less clothes than the ones back home. Then, I take my clothes out and hang them up to dry--in our entry way. Our apartment is small so that is where I put my clothes to dry. Some of our neighbors hang their clothes outside but I am afraid to do that and I don't know how.

drying rack

washing machine

What do I do about eating?
I can't survive off gelato for every meal of every day. And it gets expensive. So most of the time (6 days a week), I cook for myself. For breakfast, I have cereal and maybe a piece of fruit. I usually get the store-brand corn flakes (cheap) or the honey rings. Lunch consists of a sandwich (I thought I was eating ham...nope, it was prosciutto). I am almost out of peanut butter already so I'm rationing that. I also have an apple with lunch (delicious yellow apple). For dinner I am getting more adventurous. I'll have pasta with meat sauce or some kind of meat (hotdog, burger) with something (eggs, corn, potatoes). It is hard to cook when I have never done it before and when we don't have a microwave or toaster. However, microwaves and toasters do exist in Italy, just to clarify.

kitchen

stove and oven