Update: Saturday 5 Jan

I just want you to know that for the first time in my life, I have New Year's resolutions.

I also want you to know that I'm not telling you what they are. I want to see how long I can keep it up before I go advertising it.

Because, you know how people are. Those people who actually make resolutions make the same ones every year and they last less than a month before they go back to their normal routine.

I don't even think I have a normal routine… Oh well.

I'm turning into a legal adult in all ways (in the US anyway) next Friday. Twenty-first birthday, nothing special around here really. I don't want to get older. I just can't wait because Tessa and Simona and Jennifer and I are going to go to this all-you-can-eat sushi place that I've been dying to go to, but avoiding because it's expensive.

Tomorrow I'm going to go to the bookstore and see if there are any cookbooks I can get that have simple enough things to cook in my limited kitchen, because the things I cook regularly are getting pretty boring.

I don't usually use recipes or cookbooks… I really like to improvise… It's nice to have a starting point though, I guess.

I'm not even sure why I'm writing this update. I'm kind of just rambling. You don't mind though, right?

I think I just have food on my mind, and Italian food at that because what sounds really good to me right now is a pizza, like the pizza I got from this really cool Italian restaurant here called Vapiano. Oh I think I could write a whole blog post about Vapiano. Okay fine, I'll tell you about Vapiano.

Okay, so Vapiano is this decently cheap Italian restaurant (probably not cheap in comparison to anywhere in the US but that eating out stuff is expensive in the Netherlands). They have really good pizza and pasta. So what happens is you walk in the door and they hand you a little electronic card. Two walls have counters where you can order pizza, pasta or salad, the third wall has a coffee bar where you can order coffee or desserts. When you order, they have you hold the electronic card up to a machine where they punch in what you ordered and it scans into the card. You can keep going to whatever counter you want and order whatever you want and they just keep tacking it onto your card. At the end when you walk out, you pay for it all at once.  Their pizza is very good, their tiramisu and hot chocolate are also very good. We haven't tried the pasta or salad.

So when we went to Vapiano the first time, we got pizzas. I got a veggie pizza, it had red and yellow bell peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms, zucchini, and eggplant (which I picked off because yuck eggplant). It's a thin-crust pizza, kind of light on sauce and cheese. My lovely Italian roommate is always whining that most places here don't have "real" Italian pizza because the crusts are too thick and they are drowning in sauce and cheese, etc. Vapiano pizza is good. Very good. I want that. Right now. Followed by tiramisu, which Jenn and I nicknamed Heaven in a Cup. Yes, it was good.

Next time I go to Vapiano I will take a picture for you, of my pizza and my heaven in a cup.