By Roxanne Brown
Clermont couple discovers joys and benefits of a meatless diet.
“If you would have asked me seven years ago if I could live without meat, I may have said, ‘No,’ but now, I would never go back because the benefits and how much healthier we are today is totally worth it.” Julie Hanks
There’s nothing like coming across a good food selfie on Facebook, especially if it’s one that inspires you to ask for the recipe.
Scroll through Ernie Prado and Julie Hanks’ Facebook page and you may find yourself repeatedly asking. Every dish highlighted on their feed—from butternut squash pumpkin soup topped with black beans, spinach, and tomatoes, four cheese macaroni, chili with cornbread, lemon berry yogurt cake, to asparagus and yellow squash casserole, guacamole, sweet potato black bean burgers, and Cuban flan—looks heavenly.
“We started posting some of the stuff we cook, and people started commenting and private messaging us asking for recipes,” says Julie, who with husband Ernie, own and operate Appliance Parts of Clermont.
Ernie adds, “It’s a win-win for everyone. It helps our business by giving us exposure and something relatable to talk about with our customers, but most of all, it feels good to know we can help other people interested in a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle by educating them about where to start and showing them different options.”
Rewind about seven years to a time Ernie and Julie could have used a little help transitioning from a carnivorous diet to a vegetarian, near-vegan lifestyle (they eat some eggs and dairy).
They decided to take that route one night after watching “What the Health,” a documentary on Netflix that “examines the link between diet and disease, and the billions of dollars at stake in the healthcare, pharmaceutical and food industries.”
Julie says when the show ended, they decided to go vegetarian – cold turkey – starting right then and there.
What they didn’t know is how much their lives would be forever changed, especially Julie’s.
Ernie says he always felt helpless watching Julie suffer constantly from heartburn, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), stomach pain, nausea, tiredness, and more. And no doctor or medication had been able to cure her.
“I was very sick literally all day long and all night; I couldn’t sleep,” Julie says. “I went from doctor to doctor, I raised my bed, took all the medicines like Tums, Tagamet, and whatever other prescriptions my doctors would give me, and nothing worked.”
Today, Julie’s a whole new, much happier, more rested, healthier woman. And she owes it all to going green.
“Ever since cutting meat, I have no more heartburn and I can eat so many things without feeling miserable,” Julie explains. “I can literally drink hot sauce, lemon juice, coffee, eat chocolate, even have a beer, none of which I could do before.”
Ernie says they initially didn’t really know what to cook, so they made lots of veggies topped with different seasonings until Julie started finding and trying different recipes.
“Julie does the majority of the prep, then we just play with the ingredients,” says Ernie. “It’s fun seeing what we can come up with. It’s like an art form.”
Julie also says they make it a point to waste as little as possible when cooking. Often, after taking stock of what they have in their pantry/refrigerator, she’ll Google something like, ‘I have tomatoes, I have black beans, I have squash, I have onions, find me a recipe,’ and all kinds of recipes pop up.
Once she picks one, they’ll review the list of ingredients. If there’s an ingredient they don’t have, they’ll substitute it with something on hand. Or they’ll incorporate leftover veggies from the day before into the new dish.
“We don’t waste much at all; that’s always our goal. We cook with what we’ve got,” Julie adds.
They also use fresh ingredients, nutritional yeast for added vitamins, and cook from scratch when possible because it is more cost effective than buying prepared meals.
Plus, to reduce tiredness, they take supplements to replace the Vitamin B usually found in meats. And they load up on dark green vegetables like collard greens, spinach and Brussels sprouts to maintain healthy iron levels.
They’ve also learned to season, season, season.
“The secret to making a vegetarian lifestyle easier is seasoning. The food has to taste good, because if it doesn’t, or if it’s bland, you won’t want to eat it. You’ll feel you are missing out on something,” Ernie says.
They enjoy cooking vegetarian dishes for guests but realize that no matter how much they encourage others to try their creations, not everyone will be on board.
And they get it. Once in a long while they even get a hankering for a hot dog or a piece of steak, so that’s when they turn to plant-based products made to taste like meat.
“If you would have asked me seven years ago if I could live without meat, I may have said, ‘No,’ but now, I would never go back because the benefits and how much healthier we are today is totally worth it,” Julie says.
Recipes
Butternut Squash Pumpkin Soup
Sweet Potato Black Bean Burgers
Roasted Cuban Zucchini and Yellow Squash
Cuban Flan
Let us know!
Let us know!
Let us know!
Originally from Nogales, Arizona, Roxanne worked in the customer service industry while writing independently for years. After moving to Florida in 1999, Roxanne eventually switched her career path to focus more on writing and went on to become an award-winning reporter for The Daily Commercial/South Lake Press newspapers for 16 years prior to coming on board with Akers Media as a staff writer in July 2020 – her dream job come true.
