I have narrowed down my topic to two main ideas. The first is pickles, specifying the pickling practices of Jews. The second is Rooibos Tea; a tea from South Africa. I have connections to both of these foods; the first being one of my favorite foods and the second being my favorite tea. My research process so far has been brainstorming ideas and then briefly researching them. As a rule if I could find more than three articles on the topic it would make the shortlist. From their I narrowed it down by what I would genuinely enjoy researching. Some of the things that did not make the cut were poke, mole, and matzah ball soup.
I have entered the next steps of my research process which includes going into academic and non academic texts on rooibos tea and pickles. I think I am leaning more towards pickles currently as they follow my interest in immigrant stories and how cultures mix in the ‘new country’.
Some of the sources I have looked at so far are blog posts, and while this is not an academic source it does give a good description of the main ideas that I am starting to research. I also have found a recipe from bon appetit. I have used the UT library research tool online but have yet to access these resources. I mainly have used the google search tools so far. I have used my writer’s notebooks for narrowing down topics and organizing my research along with Zotero.
I’ve never thought about the history of pickling before, so that would be interesting to learn about. Might be hard to find academic texts about it, try using the system scoUT for ebooks.
I really like your topics! I think it’s important to research things which are important to you, and you appear to have some interesting connections to pickles and rooibos tea. Side note: I’m a huge fan of tea (rooibos is one of my favorite varieties too!), so I’d be really interested to see what you find out in your research if you choose that topic. You appear to be finding many different types of good sources, and cataloguing with Zotero seems like a good option!