When my boyfriend first told me he was a vegan, a whole mess of things ran through my head. Does that mean we’ll never get to go out to dinner together? Is he going to flip when I show up to his house on a Sunday afternoon smelling like bagels and lox? Are we going to go to PETA protests on dates, and is he going to sneak gory slaughterhouse pamphlets into my purse after I talk about jonesin’ for bacon?

Like a lot of college girls, I had been a vegetarian about 15 times by the time I’d met my boyfriend. I gave up meat in high school to freak out my parents, and I gave it up in college to lose weight, then later to impress the chain-smoking anti-war coalition kids that I wanted to hang out with.

Despite my good intentions, however, it never really stuck. The cafeteria had zero veggie options, and I was lazy — not to mention a sucker for carne asada. To boot, I had a pretty superficial understanding of what veganism is; like a lot of people, I thought all vegans were misanthropic skinny kids with social problems. Then I met John. Read More »