In need of a better diet

It's been awful quiet around here, I know. There are a couple of reasons for that:

1. My tonsils are still rebelling against me and my body. I'm now pulling out the equivalent of an atomic bomb on them in hopes of getting them unswollen. And praying I don't have to have a tonsillectomy.

2. There is no number two except to say that side effects from the treatment of my tonsils continues to render most food inedible or unappetizing.

I did manage to go out to dinner last night with some friends to Rumba on West End. It's been a couple of months since I've been there (I used to be a regular), so it was good to indulge on all of my favorites: rosemary naan, roasted red pepper flatbread and the tempura haricot verts. The fried green beans are topped with a little soy sauce and some sesame seeds and, as my dining companions noted, "totally addictive."

Aside from that, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the vegetarian meetup we had Saturday afternoon. We started off with a potluck lunch (I refuse to say what ill-executed dish I took with me--it didn't taste bad, but it didn't taste like it was supposed to) in conjunction with the raw food meetup group. There were several dishes from the raw foods section that I really enjoyed. I hope that they post their recipes for us all. I ate lunch with Yvonne Smith, The Traveling Vegetarian, who has pretty much convinced me that my next road trip must be to Asheville, North Carolina. I spent Sunday catching up on the latest installments of her show. You should check it out, too.

After lunch, we listened to Will Tuttle talk about his new book, The World Peace Diet. What an engaging speaker Dr. Tuttle is. I already knew most of what he said during his talk, but it's good to be reminded of things that are easy and convenient to forget regarding the food choices we make. Though it's hard to imagine that I'll ever go completely vegan, I did at least eat a vegan meal Saturday night.

On a rather amusing side note, one of the friends I had dinner with last night lives in London. She said that since she's been there, she's eaten mostly vegetarian Indian food. She doesn't eat chicken anyway and she said the beef tastes really bad and "gamey"; ostensibly due to the fact that they eat grass instead of corn. I thought that was funny given this post and comment thread over at Music City Bloggers.