Feasting in California!

Hi!  I am Avanator, the Californian witch sister.  I live in the beautiful Santa Cruz Mountains amongst so much amazing local produce as well as premier wineries.  I have loved cooking ever since I can remember, making batches of various Hungarian treats or lemon bread.  Now I see it as a challenge, to follow a recipe or rather your palate to create the Ultimate homemade dish.   
 
Due to far too many hours spent with foodie magazines, food shows/videos, and a gigantic library of cookbooks, I have a fairly decent knowledge of the culinary arts without any formal training.  However, I live in one of the most expensive regions in USA on a student's salary, and thus have a box-sized kitchen.  This makes gourmet cooking slightly more challenging.  I can easily find most ingredients here thanks to the odd health food stores in Santa Cruz and the Asian markets in Silicon Valley.  Santa Cruz is along the Pacific Ocean in the Central Coast, and we have a lot of fresh fish/seafood, but nothing like Nekohakase has in Japan!

I will also do my best to post once a week with photos as long as I can remember to keep my camera battery charged.  I may on occasion use a brand name/store name, but only where I feel it is important to give recognition to a rare/amazing or super-local product.  Hope you enjoy reading!!

Greetings from Japan!

Hi, call me Nekohakase. I'm the kitchen witch sister in Japan.
I have less experience in the kitchen than my more epicureanly talented sister, but my specialty is Hungarian food, and I'm good at presentation and variation as opposed to originality! I also have training in bread making and sweets - cooking school was a hobby of mine for a couple years.

Living abroad does limit me sometimes in the kitchen in certain ways - there are certain ingredients I need to make from scratch (like frosting - they don't sell canned frosting in Japan!) and certain kinds of cheese and meat that are simply not available at all (I simply can't find pepperoni! Would you believe that??).

But on the other hand, I have access to other ingredients that are less available in other places, like fresh mirin, raw wasabi and Japanese rice, and a fresher selection of fish and other exotic vegetables like goya and daikon.

I'll try to handle recipes using the metric system, and with substitutes where necessary, and will use no brand names.

I pledge to post one recipe, with pictures (good or bad!) per week on this blog! Circumstances permitting, of course.