Two smiling women pose outdoors holding a copy of Let’s Make Ramen! A white arrow points to the woman on the right, with text reading, “Evil ‘but of COURSE you need another cookbook’ Kristen.”

My friend and I went to J-Town in Markham, ON today, before the storm! I was going to post in Bluesky about this, realized the thread would be way too long, thought HEY, this is the perfect excuse to a social blog like .

Two smiling women at a small restaurant table.

We were both hungry so decided to grab some lunch at Tanuki before browsing the shops.

On Kristen's recommendation, I ordere the omurice, which is a soft omelette on chicken fried rice with mushrooms, green peas, and gravy.

Omurice, which is a soft omelette on chicken fried rice with mushrooms, green peas, and gravy. Served on a blue plate with a small container of gravy.

It was SO good, and I've decided that I need to learn how to make this. As soon as I got home, I did a search in Just One Cookbook (a wonderful Japanese cooking website that Kristen introduced me to) and hurray, found an omurice recipe!

Kristen ordered shrimp yakisoba. It also looked good but couldn't possibly have been as tasty as my omurice.

Closeup of Japanese food in a blue-patterned bowl. Food includes noodles, shrimp, a fried egg, shredded green vegetables.

We also browse other shops in J-Town where I picked up some onigiri, Shichimi togarashi (Japanese seven spice), packages of Japanese pickles, bento boxes for dinner with Jeff, and this Natto and Cucumber roll.

Seaweed wrapped rice roll labelled "Natto & Cucumber (Fermented soybeans)" wrapped in plastic, on a cutting board.

I did offer to some Jeff when I got home, counting on the fact that he would make a face at the "natto" part and not want any. Scarfed the whole thing.

I hadn't been planning to buy anything else, but then saw a copy of Let's Make Ramen: A Comic Book Cookbook by Hugh Amano and Sarah Becan aka .

llustrated cover of Let’s Make Ramen! by Hugh Amano and Sarah Becan, showing a bowl of ramen with noodles, eggs, sliced meat, vegetables, and other toppings.

I'll talk more about how I first heard about this book in How Readers Find Books but it was seeing it in one of the J-Town shops that pushed me over the edge. Well, almost. I was hesitating because I already own way too many cookbooks. I confessed this to Kristen but also made the mistake of saying that most of them were in the storage locker right now. She immediately brightened and came up with lots of very reasonable sounding justifications about why I needed to get this cookbook.

Kristen is a Toronto bookseller, so I'm not surprised that she is such a wonderful book enabler. 😁 I'm hoping to convince her to do a guest post for How Readers Find Books. 🤞🏽

But I digress.

I actually wanted to try out 's POLL capability, so let's see how this works.

QUESTION: Do you think it's possible to own too many cookbooks?

All votes are public

If you have another answer, feel free to post a reply in the comments!