I spent past week thinking about what topic I will choose for the research. I had few things in mind, history of Italian foods such as pizza and pasta, origin of coffee, and Indian culture and food, especially curry. I started with all these topics and looked over  some recipes or videos to see which I am most interested. Then I remembered that the curry I had here in America such as Teji’s on Guadalupe street is different with the curry I make at home which is Korean curry. Curry that is sold at vietnamese restaurants also has different taste. This was pretty interesting and I began to question the diversity of curry and further more, Indian food history and origin. I guess I will stick with this topic. What I am thinking now is where I should start. Right now I am relying on google, but UT library search engine seemed helpful and had many books about curry, Indian food and culture. I have not seen them yet but after I narrow down how my research is going to be, I can use these sources to write my annotated bibliography.

I wanted to find a topic that particularly fit my taste in food. So what I did was start going to establishments and trying different genres of food to see what I was the most interested in choosing for my topic. The first thing that came to mind was my love of donuts. This appealed to me, because it’s one of those things that helps “Keep Austin Weird.” Round Rock donuts has the “Texas Donut” which is bigger than a football, Ken’s Donut’s keeps with the tradition of Texas with the “Longhorn Donut”, and finally there are Voodoo Donuts, which is as weird as it sounds. So I went to their websites first which can be found by just typing their names into Google.

Then I thought to myself maybe I should do something completely original to Austin. So I went online in search of truly Austin establishments. What I found is that a lot of the famous ones were Tex-Mex which makes sense given this is Texas. The ones that stuck out to me the most were Juan-in-a-Million for breakfast and Matt’s El Rancho.

I think I want to stick with Tex-Mex, but unfortunately between Math theory test last week, career fair, SOA qualifications, and my econ test tomorrow I haven’t had much time yet. So any suggestions on where to go with this topic are welcome.

Due to being sick last week, I had a late start to my research. I felt a little behind, because I have so many topics that I still want to explore before deciding on one. My initial interests are something having to do with Memphis famous restaurants, the history/rise of Starbucks, and different Tel Aviv restaurants.

I am spending my summer in Tel Aviv, so I think that would be very beneficial to me but since I don’t speak Hebrew so finding sources would be harder and have only been there once before. I don’t think this topic will make the cut. I would probably be more qualified to write about it after this summer.

When pursuing my idea about making my project about Starbucks, I went to the most trustful source I could think of, starbucks.com. Starbucks is a very popular company, and I think that it would be interesting to write about their globalization, and progress since they first opened in 1971. When using the UT Library search engine, stout, I was able to find many EBooks about the company. I think this would be a good topic to pursue. If I do this, I can include sources about the history of coffee, and Starbuck’s effects of popularizing this drink.

When doing research on certain Memphis foods, I thought of narrowing it down to either famous restaurants of just BBQ in general. I think that this topic would be very easy to find articles on reviews and about the different options of BBQ, and the history.

I think that I am in a good place in regards to my research process. I have two good possible options that I think I would enjoy learning more about.

Over the past two weeks, I have been looking at different websites online and thinking about a topic that would interest me. I finally decided to research about the cuisines and culture of East Asia, particularly Taiwan and China, since my parents are from Taiwan and I grew up eating food from those cuisines. I have mostly been using Google to help me find sources that are related to my topic. I also looked on the UT library website but most of the results are books that are actually located in the library, so I need to find a chance to take a look around the PCL sometime. I found a recipe book for Chinese dishes on the UT library website (http://ebookcentral.proquest.com.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/lib/utxa/reader.action?docID=903067), so this can help me get an idea of what kind of dishes are part of the Chinese cuisine. I also found another book called The Land of the Five Flavors that explains the cultural history of the Chinese cuisine (http://ebookcentral.proquest.com.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/lib/utxa/detail.action?docID=1531172). I have a Google Doc to help me keep track of my citations and every time I find something new, I’ll put the link in there so I have a list of my sources that I might use.

The research I have been working on over the past few weeks has been rough but is now coming along nicely. At first, my biggest challenge was coming up with a topic. I decided to go with a topic that I enjoy so that I will not be bored while researching. Learning about the history of my favorite kind of food is going to be very interesting to me and something that I believe I can benefit from in life. Asian food and I have always had a great connection and we meet around 5 times a week. http://www.asian-recipe.com/cuisine-evolution.html is a site that shows me the history of Asian food along with information on more delicious recipes I can learn. I feel like the history of Asian food is a broad topic so getting more deep into it and maybe finding better and more detailed topics would be nice. If I’m going to be honest, my research skills overall are pretty pathetic and bad. My go to move is google but beyond that I struggle when it comes to researching and I look forward to learning more skills as the semester unfolds. To conclude, I like where I am at now but more work is going to be needed for me to feel comfortable and confident in my work.

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.

In thinking about possible research topics, one of the things that was mentioned in class that has given me the most guidance is to choose a genre that I am genuinely interested in. I have extreme difficulty engaging with reading that I am uninterested in, so picking articles that are personably enjoyable makes processing information and interacting with the text much easier. The genre of text that I have chosen is comedy. I have a very humor-driven personality, and I take great enjoyment in consuming comedy in all forms of media. However, when one things of food, comedy is not the first thing that comes to mind. My only concern is: is there enough comedic food articles available for me to construct a solid annotated bibliography? Also, will I need to select my articles using a more specific focus (writing format, author purpose, audience, etc.), or is it ok to simply use funny articles in general?

I started my research process by using fairly vague search terms in Google, such as “funny food writing. One thing that I found to be particularly useful was that oftentimes, authors will include links to other humorous food-articles, so I’ve been able to find a lot of comedic food writing by examining the sources of other writers. I think this is going to be one of the primary ways that I get my own sources. For example, Violet Meyer wrote the following article entitled “Funny Food Writing” which includes 6 hyperlinks to other works of comedic food-writing. Although these articles differ in writing style and content, they are all very funny and have given me a great start to my research process. I particularly enjoyed “Dear Guy Who Just Made My Burrito”, and plan to include it in my annotated bibliography.

After the first few weeks of research, I’m starting to develop an idea of what my topic will be.  I was really intrigued by our introductory reading in this unit, Deborah Holtz and Juan Carlos Mena’s Tacopedia.  Having grown up in and around Mexican culture, it was very interesting to read more about how corn became so vital to sustenance in early Mexico and to see how corn usage has evolved over time.  My initial interest with Tacopedia led me to look into other sources relating to Mexican food culture.  In research, I have found the UT Libraries scoUT function extremely helpful to finding relevant and credible sources.  One source I’ve found that I think will make a really interesting addition is Gustavo Arellano’s Taco USA, which recounts the importance of Mexican food in the melting pot that is United States food culture.  

    Although I’m finding plenty of sources, I’m still struggling with finding a good way to organize them.  The traditional folder of web bookmarks isn’t cutting it anymore, and I’m wondering, what are you guys using to organize your documents and your thoughts about them?

    Overall, I feel like my research is coming along nicely.  I believe that I’ve settled on a good topic I have a lot of interest in.  I’m still in the early stages of documenting my ideas about the sources I am finding, but I think I’ve found many sources which will be complementary to my finalized annotated bibliography.  

The research I have done over the past two weeks is slowly starting to come together. Last week, I was focused on choosing a topic that I was interested in and making sure there would be enough information on that topic for the annotated bibliography. I am going to focus on Thai food and the culture that surrounds it. So far, I have mostly been using Google, but this is because most of the research I have done up to this point has simply been researching the historical significance of some Thai dishes that I enjoy. The first website I have been looking at is http://www.foodbycountry.com/Spain-to-Zimbabwe-Cumulative-Index/Thailand.html. This website has helped provide me an overview of the history of a few popular Thai dishes in addition to explaining some Thai traditions, such as certain holiday dishes. I need to figure out a more specific topic I want to focus on and once I am able to look at a few more sources, I think it will be easier for me to come up with something more specific relating to Thai traditions. As I get further into my research, I have been citing the websites on the notes section on my laptop. For me, this is the easiest way to stay organized as I can pull up all my sources on one document. The next part of my research will focus on narrowing in on a topic and finding sources from a variety of authors.

My research has been slow but steady over the past 2 weeks. I have narrowed myself down to focusing on the different kinds of foods that made it to America because of immigrants. I have found a few articles online discussing the significance of specific foods brought over by immigrant’s groups, specifically one in particular that labeled these foods as “Foodways” (http://immigrationtounitedstates.org/504-foodways.html). I have been using google, and the online UT library database, but I am having trouble finding articles particularly about how the immigrant food then affects U.S. culture. What phrases could help me narrow down my research to a more specific idea? My citation organization has been much more up to par than I originally anticipated with a simple word document that I continue to fill with citations as I find more texts. At the moment, I have several different texts, but I am nervous as to how much relevant content I can pull from them. For example, one article with a title that contains “…Knowing ‘Good Food’ Immigrant Knowledge…” is actually a very short news story related to farming and healthy foods and has little to do with immigrants (http://search.proquest.com/docview/1628003976?pq-origsite=summon). Overall, I think at this point I simply need to find more material that aligns specifically with historical immigrants bringing over their own foods and cultures to America. Most of my research is coming from more present day articles and books, but to really delve into my topic, I need to find some more historical texts to reference.