Well, What DO You Eat?

Karenna Colcroft, erotic author and "meat" connoisseur, joins us today. Please help us welcome her.

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People nowadays eat just about anything edible. If you watch certain shows on the TLC cable network, you'll find that sometimes people even eat things that aren't edible. Most people don't think anything of eating a triple hamburger with everything on it and a heaping order of fries, or eating shellfish right out of the shell.

But tell them you're a vegetarian, and that changes. People view vegetarians with amusement and sometimes even suspicion. I guess they think we're going to convert their salads and fruits to an inappropriate lifestyle.

Being vegetarian isn't easy. In restaurants, it's hard to find menu items that don't contain meat. My ex-husband once took me out to eat at a major chain restaurant, which will remain nameless. I read the menu and saw nothing without meat, other than onion rings and fries. When the waitress returned to take our order, I asked her whether there was anything without meat in it. She replied that they had a house salad. I asked what was in it. She listed several things, then added, "And bacon."

Okay...since when is bacon not meat?

Answering questions from people who don't understand the concept isn't easy either. Many times, people from an online dating site I belong to have asked me what I eat. And then gone on to list different meats, because apparently saying that I don't eat meat doesn't, in their minds, rule out every individual type of meat. I usually end the conversation by saying, "There's only one kind of meat I eat," with an expression that leaves no doubt to my meaning.

Of course, saying that to a single man from an adult dating site probably isn't the best idea.

The crowning bit of idiocy came from the aforementioned ex-husband, who threatened to take my kids away after I left him because I was vegetarian. Not because the kids were; they eat meat. But because I was, and, according to him, "Being vegetarian isn't healthy. You don't get any calcium if you don't eat meat." Someone seriously needs to educate him on minerals and vitamins and such.

In my upcoming M/M novel Salad on the Side, narrator Kyle Slidell faces some of the same questions and comments. He goes one step further than I did; he's vegan, which means not only doesn't he eat meat, he eats no dairy, no eggs, and no honey. Nothing that comes from an animal. Which is a slight problem for him when he's transformed into a werewolf. Even in wolf form, however, Kyle sticks to his principles and refuses to eat meat.

Except for that one kind...