Peppermint tea, Carlton (Lit review)

Technically, I'm having hot water. Not a tea, not even a tisane, just hot water. It seems that I forgot to put the peppermint tea into my mug and I've just been drinking hot water. I've had so much peppermint tea lately that my taste buds have numbed to its flavour and I can't tell the difference between tea and hot water. This is definitely the most interesting discovery yielded so far from this tea reseach project.

[Not that this is a 'tea research project', just that I need a legitimate segue into my next, pre-written paragraph]

Now all good research projects (woohoo!) start with a literature review of the existing discourse surrounding a chosen subject matter. As many who know me will agree, I suck at reseach (and don't have the Masters to prove it...) so didn't bother doing a lit review before I started this blog. However, I've since spent time researching other people's tea blogs in an effort to (a) make sure that my own blog is somewhat original in its content and (b) plagiarise some of the better but harder-to-find ideas into my own work.

I made some interesting discoveries:

Tea Blog

This blog was created by a London artist who documented her single predominant thought while drinking every tea she had over a three-year period. Crazy artists. Technically not so much a tea blog as a 'set of hot beverage sticky notes', the site is colour-coded to show her thoughts while drinking 'normal tea', Earl Grey tea, coffee, hot chocolate and other hot treats. Thoughts include "I bet I get carried away and start bidding for things I really don't want (cup-o-soup*)", "I hope those roast potatoes don't make me feel too drowsy (coffee [my predominant thought here was whether she drank the coffee to combat the awesome power of the roast potatoes])" and "Now you come to mention it, it's pretty easy to believe that scientifically tea has no taste, just smell (normal tea)." Given this cup of hot water I'm currently drinking, she just might be onto something.

*Points off for including Aldi-brand cup-o-soups and miso in her tea blog ("It's a meal!"), and for "How can I justify this as a hot beverage?" not being her predominant thought while consuming Lemsip.

Points awarded, however, for setting an end date to the project. I feel better knowing that while she spent countless hours blogging such mundane thoughts, she eventually intended to return to a normal social life. Her final blog reads "31 December 2008: just think of all the free time I'll have when I finally don't have to bother updating the blog anymore." Amen.

After this, I got bored with the lit review and gave up. Much like the one I started in 2005...