Michael’s Research Topic

I have chosen to do my research topic over humorous food media. I chose to pursue this topic because I am a very humor-driven person and strongly enjoy comedy in all its forms. I didn’t want to bore myself with this project, so I chose this topic because It is focused around something that I genuinely enjoy. I have had success finding food comedy over a wide variety of mediums, from texts to videos. In addition, I think I have done a good job with the diversity of the content.

Some of the texts that I have chosen to include thus far are NYT’s Review of Guy’s American KitchenIt’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckersand Surviving Whole FoodsEach of these texts are written about very different things, yet they all relate to food in some way. The first text is a scathing review of a restaurant, discussing not only the food, but the atmosphere and experience of the place itself. The second text never talks about eating or preparing food all all, but rather analyzes the symbolism of gourds and how they have come to represent the image of Fall. Finally, the third text references the process of going to a store and purchasing food, something that is often overlooked when writing about preparing and cooking food.

I recently began to broaden my mediums of communication by including videos as well. I have had great success finding a number of comical videos on YouTube. Most of the videos that I am thinking about using thus far are fairly similar structure-wise in that they are all “cooking show” videos. Two of my favorites are  Chef Henny’s Henny Cookieswhich shows the viewer how to prepare, Hennesy-based chocolate chip cookies, and How To Make Vegan Blueberry Muffins with Waka Flocka Flame & Raury, which shows two vegan rappers tackling a rather complex recipe for blueberry muffins. I plan to continue searching YouTube for videos that incorporate food in a different way other than instructional, how-to cooking videos.

I have noticed a bit of split in regards to the age of the authors in relation to the medium. The written articles that I have found so far have all been composed by older authors while most of the videos are made by younger individuals. I think this is representative of the dichotomy of traditional versus. modern day forms of communication. Older people are used to communication via writing while younger generations experience a lot of content digitally with the rise of internet and televisions.

For my readers, I have several questions regarding the future of my research. Firstly, is my topic too broad? Should I narrow it down to a more specific sub-genre within comedy? Also are there any comedic mediums besides texts and videos that you recommend I include in my bibliography? I look forward to exploring any suggestions that you offer!

Research Topic

I had a hard time deciding on a topic, but I think I’ve finally decided to focus on Thai food. At first I wasn’t sure what I wanted to look into specifically, but after my initial research, I am going to focus on all the different cultural impacts on Thai food. I started by researching the general history Thai food and learned that China has been more impactful than any other country or region. My favorite Thai dish is chicken pad thai, so I started researching the history of this dish. From an article titled “A Brief History of Delicious Pad Thai”, I was able to find out that pad thai was originally created to help separate Thai and Chinese cultures from each other. At that time, the leader of Thailand wanted to help separate the two cultures and thought that creating a national dish of Thailand would help accomplish this. Sure enough, that dish was pad thai. I want to do some more research on why this leader thought creating a national dish would be an effective way to separate the two cultures and if food was really this important to him. I am curious to find out if the people of Thailand also saw food as an effective way to establish their own identity. I am also looking at how the different regions of Thailand each have been impacted by different cultures and therefore have very different foods/traditions than each other. I have yet to look at this in much detail but am excited to learn about the wide variety of cultural impacts on each of the four regions.

Unlikely Authors of Cookbooks — Research Topic

For my annotated bibliography, I decided to cover unlikely authors of cookbook as my topic. The inspiration came from a birthday present I bought for my sister—a Salvador Dali cookbook; I read somewhere that his book was being republished for the first time in 40 years, and I knew she was fascinated with Dali, so it seemed perfect.

After being assigned the annotated bibliography where the topic could be just about anything regarded food, I thought about the present for my sister and realized it would be a fun and hopefully unique track to follow—unlikely authors of cookbooks.

Luckily, there are plenty of celebrities out there who want to continue their time in the spotlight, so the number of unlikely cookbook authors is not small. The striking authors I came across, to name a few, were Boy George, Dolly Parton, 2Chainz, Chrissy Teigen, and the list goes on. I took it upon myself to simply pick at random, which celebrities whose cookbook I wanted to dive into, and I honestly have to thank good ol’ Salvador Dali for sparking that interest!

As far as texts good and things to actually create the annotated bibliography, I decided to take a different take on the cookbooks; I wanted to focus on the actual books I could get my hands on or access easily, of course, but to avoid spending a lot of money, I decided analyzing reviews on these authors and their cookbooks would be an interesting spin on the project. I plan to focus on the writing style of reviews for these particular authors and how they differ from more expected authors, per se.

I’m hoping that using reviews, I’ll get a wide variety of writing styles and voices. There’s more research to be done, but I’m looking forward to what I find.

 

Research Topic Update (Nima)

When this assignment was first given to us, I did not think hard before choosing my original topic.  I decided to do my annotated bibliography on avocados.  Avocados are delicious, healthy, versatile, and have been used for centuries for a variety of purposes; however, I feel that the topic would have been too broad for an annotated bibliography.  Thus, I decided to change my topic to a type of cuisine that avocados are commonly found in: sushi.

While compiling my sources for sushi, I discovered a common theme among many of the links, texts, and videos.  The etiquette of eating sushi is almost as important as the food itself.  In Japanese culture, honor and respect is stressed heavily in all stages of life, especially towards elders, who, not coincidentally, make up the majority of the ‘master sushi chef’ population.  I began to think about my topic once again, and I realized that sushi is also quite a broad topic.  So I have decided to change my topic once again to the etiquette of sushi.  This specifically involves the different customs that revolve around sushi, such as how to eat different types of sushi, condiment usage, and ways to show respect to the sushi chef, among other things.  The following links, which are also two of my sources for the bibliography, do an accurate job of describing most of the customs of sushi-eating:

Link 1: How to Eat Sushi

Link 2: Sushi Etiquette

Finally, I have a question for my classmates.  What do you think about my new topic compared to my previous two?  Do you think it is unique and specific enough to warrant an entire annotated bibliography?  Is my topic now too specific?

 

 

Research Topic: Hawaiian Food

I have chosen the topic of Hawaiian Food for my research project. Specifically I am looking at indigenous Hawaiian foods and the ‘newer’ Hawaiian foods. To me these two types are unique in how they came about.

The native Hawaiian foods use a select group of ingredients that are native to the island. These ingredients are becoming more and more scarce as the population has increased and land grabs have happened. As the environment of the island changes so do the natural resources that once were plentiful are now scarce leading to a harder to find native Hawaiian cuisine.

The other cusine I am looking at is the ‘newer’ or local Hawaiian foods. These foods are a fusion of other cultures that have come to the islands in the later half of the 1800’s. This cuisine including Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Chinese and other Pacific Islanders food. This food is unique in that immigrants from these nations brought their own cooking styles to Hawaiian and over plantation lunches they all become one new uniquely local cuisine.

This research project looks at plate lunches as a sample of this amalgamation of cultures into a single unique cuisine. Specifically plate lunches from local diners in Hawaiian and family recipes in The Food of Paradise: Exploring Hawaii’s Culinary Heritage and larger chains like L and L.

My Research Topic

It took a while but I believe I can settle on a topic that I truly am interested in. I wasn’t certain until I talked with Thea, but I really feel like it would be interesting to compare the recipes for what people consider to be the “top” foods of Osaka and how they vary across regions, even if some of the opinions are from blogs or videos. Some of the foods that people really like can be found in these lists:

http://www.withhusbandintow.com/foods-to-eat-in-osaka/

https://triplelights.com/blog/10-foodsmust-tryosaka-91

Most notably, I would love to take a look at okonomiyaki (Japanese savory pancake), takoyaki (battered octopus balls), and karaage (fried chicken). I remember the occasion where I walked down a single street in Osaka and every minute, there would be another place selling their own variation of takoyaki or karaage. Similarly, there are many variations on recipes found on the internet as well as well known cookbooks such as Shizuo Tsuji’s Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art which has adapted recipes for cooking in America and Tadashi Ono’s Japanese Soul Cooking, which has recipes from “Tokyo and beyond”. I am also interested in Japanese cookbooks which have been translated rather than written in English first. There is one additional book I’ve found that is interestingly published in both English and Japanese within a single book called Recipes of Japanese Cooking by Yuko Fujita. There is even a documentary called “Wa-shoku ~Beyond Sushi~” which details the westernization of some of these Japanese dishes.

I really would love to see how recipes have changed across regions because I know that I had to adapt my own recipe based on what I could find at HEB.

The only thing I’m not really sure about is if I should stick to those three foods or do less/more. Maybe upon further look at the material.

Ryan H’s Research Topic

Over the past couple of weeks I have done lots of research for potential topics and after considering my options I decided to look into chicken as food, and the cultural and historical significance of chicken throughout the world. The more I thought about it the more I realized that chicken was such a staple food of so many cultures; it seemed like the ultimate versatile food item that was served everywhere.  This really piqued my interest. I started my research and began looking for answers to the questions I had: When are the earliest records of chicken being eaten? What do some early chicken recipes look like? Where did chicken come from? I found many answers in an article published by NPR reporter Dan Charles titled “The Ancient City Where People Decided To Eat Chickens.” As I continued my research I determined it would be useful to see some old recipes and see examples of ways that different cultures prepare chicken. I started by finding a recipe for fried chicken in “The Virginia Housewife,” Mary Randolph’s classic American cookbook. This is believed to be one of the first fried chicken recipes to be published in America. This source shows one example of the cultural implications of chicken when it came to America.  It serves as an example of how one culture modified and adapted chicken recipes to put their own spin on it.

While this source is very helpful, it is not enough to learn about different cultures. As I continue my research, I hope to delve into old cookbooks or find old archived recipes online from cultures all over the world. I really want to learn about the different symbolic meanings that chicken has in each culture.

Research Topic

I originally was going to do research on Chinese food, but I couldn’t find too many sources that were useful so I decided to switch to something else. I decided to look into the history and making of ice cream, and how we have so many different flavors now. I was sitting in my room the other night thinking of some food I like, and I thought about how I was going to get ice cream after my exam this week, which led me to choose ice cream as my topic. I found several websites online about the history of ice cream, including an article from the IDFA (IDFA Ice Cream History), the Farmer’s Almanac (Almanac), and a page from history.org (History.org Ice Cream). After learning about the history of ice cream, I thought it would be appropriate to also learn about how ice cream is made. I found more information on the IDFA website (IDFA Making of Ice Cream). I also went on google to look up the popular flavors of ice cream and found a list of the top 15 flavors here (Top Flavors). I know there are a lot of unique flavors around the world and I hope I can find more information about that. I thought going from the history, to the making of, and finally to ice cream today would flow along nicely. When I went on the internet to look up a list of ice cream flavors, I ended up finding a lot of results for different ice cream companies, so I wasn’t sure if I should take a look at a lot of them and then pick out the more unique flavors to include when talking about how ice cream flavors have changed.

 

Blog Post-Research Topic

When I think of food, I immediately conclude to Asian food. In my lifetime, it has always been this way and I have always been curious to know the background history of my favorite dishes like Teriyaki Chicken, Lo Mein, Sesame Chicken & Mongolian Beef. In my research, I have been using http://www.asian-nation.org/asian-food.shtml to really help me understand many different aspects including how to make the food, the health facts about it and the popularity of the food. With the topic of Asian food, I can really talk about a broad variety of things. Asian food has many different kinds of foods whether it be appetizers, entrees, desserts or even drinks. I really enjoy researching information about the facts about Asian food including things like knowing that Asian food has the biggest variety of flavors out of all the others! http://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/chinese-food/chinese-food-facts.htm  is a website that I can go on and learn a lot of interesting facts that are fun to know. My research has been going smoothly so far but I need to expand further than the internet. It would be cool to have knowledge from magazines, newspapers and especially from people who have lived in an Asian food environment!

Research Topic

In my last post about my research process, I mentioned how I wanted to write about sushi but didn’t know exactly which specific route I wanted to take. Since then, I have looked at my options and decided that I am going to write about the difference between sushi in Japan versus sushi in the United States. I am still going to incorporate my idea of writing about the history of sushi by mentioning in briefly at the beginning, however, the main focus of my paper will be how sushi is Americanized when brought to the U.S. and how that differs from how sushi is served and prepared in Japan.

I have had a little bit of trouble finding articles on this topic that contain thorough and efficient information that will help me with writing my annotated bibliography. However, I have found some helpful ones such as “Global Sushi: Eating and Identity” by Paige A. Edwards from Western Michigan University and “A yen for sushi: an analysis of demographic and behavioural patterns of sushi consumption in Japan”. These two articles are some that I find myself returning to a lot and have been two of my favorites. They highlight on the importance of studying culture through food and how sushi in Japan is more than just something to satisfy hunger, but rather a means of association.

One goal of mine in my research process is to find resources and articles written by American authors along with authors of Japanese descent. This will allow me to receive information from both perspectives. My future plans for my research also include finding videos or movies that will help me with my writing. I plan to do this through the use of YouTube and finding movies on Netflix such as “Jiro Dreams of Sushi”. I plan on watching this movie in order to give me an idea of the art of sushi in Japan. Are there any other ways for me to retrieve information on this topic or anything in particular I should be researching? Do I need to broaden my research a little bit more?