One month vegan!

I started eating vegan just a bit over a month ago, but decided to post this only today, to make sure I don't count those few first days when I might have cheated by accident. What I mean by that, is that when you decide to go full vegan from hamburger-with-mayo-and-cheeese eater, you might not even realise how many products contain animals.. Those first days were hard, not only because I realised I had to stop eating a lot of great things, but also because I realised that by eating those products, I was hurting nature. You could call it a really bad case of cognitive dissonance: I reaaaally wanted some cheese, but I really did not at the same time.
Knowledge is power. I looked more deeply into things and day-by-day, that made it easier to make the right choice. I don't think I could eat cheese now. Definitely no meat.
Yesterday I was buying pasta and I realised that while most of them don't have eggs, there was no tagliatelle without eggs. As a beginner vegan, you do question your decision in such a moment. But this experience, it's all about being conscious. I held the tagliatelle for a while, realising more and more that I would probably couldn't enjoy it with a conscious mind, with awareness about the abuse a poor chicken goes through to lay that egg. Then I put it back and looked through the shelves. There are so many other options.

Really, there are so many options. People sometimes wonder what vegans eat. I also did. The first few days of being vegan was also more saying no to bad things and eating very little for me. Simply because I didn't have the right options at hand. Again, as I did my research (and as my hunger grew) I found so many amazing, delicious dishes! I still keep finding new things everything I go to the store. And if you think you will miss meat and cheese, yes you will. But there is plant-based "cheese" and "meat". In all the forms your heart desires: hotdog, hamburger, mozzarella, you name it. I was really happy when I found out about those things, but that happiness wasn't really true. Those things do taste maybe even more like chicken than real chicken, but when you look at the ingredients, even if it's all plant based, it's not the healthiest out there.. So, I'm trying to eat plant-based meat as little as possible (it's really not hard if you are eating conscious and think about all the bad stuff that's in that piece of "meat").
So what do I eat? Whole foods. Those are food with which they didn't temper before putting them on the shelves. They didn't go to a big factory and get mixed up a few times to make them look better and taste better. I have to be honest, I'm still working on finding out what is really good and what's not. But one thing I know: nature is giving us so many great things, which taste already amazing, we just have to take a moment and realise that we don't need extra sugar and fat and salt. It is good as it is.

Here is a selection of what I've been eating this past month. :)