A basic, SIBO-friendly meal, with benefits.

Here’s what I ate for lunch today. It is a good example of a basic, SIBO-friendly meal. Very tasty, very easy on the belly and very simple to pull together, too. That’s what I call benefits!

Having three separate dishes to prepare looks a bit complicated, but don’t be fooled. Honestly, the most labor intensive part of this meal was cutting a Kabocha Squash in half, scooping out the seeds and putting it face down in a Pyrex baking dish with an inch of water to cook at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes.

The chicken was already made—I just warmed up a portion in a cast iron pan during the last 10-15 minutes of squash cooking time. It’s a Whole Foods “Classic Brine” rotisserie chicken, my fave. (No iffy ingredients, just salt and chicken.)

When the Kabocha was fork tender I took the pan out of the oven, transferred the squash into another bowl and added a couple handfuls of pre-washed Organic Baby Kale leaves into the piping hot, sweet squash water still remaining in the baking dish. I tossed the kale around to wet it thoroughly, popped the whole pan back in the oven and let those greens steam in there for about 5 minutes.

This was the first time I had this brilliant idea to steam greens in the oven using leftover squash-baking water that was already hot and in the pan. It cooked the kale perfectly and anything that saves on dishes is good with me.

When the baby kale was done, I used the remaining squash-baking water, still in the same pan to mash up some of the cooked squash, making it moist and delicious. (Again saving me a dish to clean. More genius!)

Then, I ate. YUM.

FYI Kabocha squash is listed as Japanese Pumpkin in the FODMAPS food guide. (I have the App on my iPhone and it’s so handy.) A half-cup serving of Japanese pumpkin is rated there as 100% green light legal. Ditto for a half-cup of kale.

Mind you, just because a food is low-FODMAP doesn’t mean it will agree with YOU and your SIBO belly. Take kale. Personally, I don’t do very well with this leafy green when it is fully mature. The first (and last) time I tried Dinosaur Kale, for instance, was a big, gassy mistake. But sweet and tender baby kale seems to digest beautifully for me.