Introduction

VegeTales is a collection of 36 stories of various vegetables - some that are common and eaten every day almost all over the world, like potatoes and tomatoes. And some which are specific to a country or region, like avarakkai beans that originated in India, and are now grown in backyards in Western Australia.

VegeTales was responsible for bringing together a group of people from various walks of life, from various countries and with various interests. From professional chefs to home cooks, from people who sold vegetables, to people who worked on market gardens or grew their own vegetables in backyards. There are stories of vegetable markets, of various methods of cooking and of social situations in which vegetables play a central role. So many perceptions of vegetables and ways of approaching and dealing with them, whether in a professional kitchen, on a bush track or in the backyard over an open fire. One story even recounts how a professional artist used vegetable juice as paint when times were hard.

The 27 VegeTellers who contributed to this collection of stories live mainly in Western Australia, but the project interested VegeTellers from the Eastern States of Australia and in various countries: China, Canada, Ukraine. Several people in Western Australia were born overseas and wrote of vegetables which evoked fond memories of their former home countries: Vietnam, Germany, India, South Africa, England and Israel. If not for anything else, this little collection of stories demonstrates the differences and similarities in our approaches to growing, buying, cooking and eating vegetables.

Each story is illustrated with a pen and ink sketch. These are not intended to provide a visual botanical guide to the vegetable or plant that it came from, but to enhance the written word. We hope you enjoy this collection of stories.

Initiated, collected and illustrated by Anne Atkinson

Edited by Lucille Fisher
Formatting by Clare McBeath
Website design by Roger Atkinson

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons    Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License