Gut-friendly vegetables & recipes

If you have a sensitive or poorly functioning intestine, vegetables can often be a problem or difficult to digest. The key is to test your veggies or just eat a small amount (well cooked) at first and gradually increase.

In extreme cases, you may need to puree your vegetables. Just like using elemental shakes to heal your colon by bringing it back to the breast milk stage, cooked pureed vegetables also bring our colon back to the baby stage.

So you can puree both the first and the last recipe here if necessary, but remove the garlic before pureeing.

Garlic and vegetable pan

Chop into bite-sized pieces / slices: peeled carrots, celery, unpeeled cucumber, red peppers. Together with 50/50 olive oil and butter / ghee (or coconut oil) and chopped garlic (Leave garlic whole or in large pieces if you need to remove it for intestinal tolerability). Sprinkle with sesame seeds before serving.

* I couldn’t believe it when all 3 of my kids ate this dish in their teens – even the 5 year old! The garlic with the butter and olive oil make this really tastier than you think.

Serve as a side dish with your protein source or pasta or with rice.

Note: You may never have thought of cooking unpeeled cucumbers (in bite-sized pieces), but this is often done in oriental cuisine and it tastes absolutely delicious. Of course, cucumbers cook very quickly.

Veggie miso pasta pan

3-4 servings of soba (buckwheat) or other GF noodles
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 cloves of chopped or minced garlic
1 tbsp fresh ginger (in large pieces, so it can be easily removed as desired)
1 tbsp cold-pressed sesame oil
1-2 handfuls of spinach or baby cabbage or Swiss chard (if you like more)

Sauce:
2 tbsp miso (light, not red or dark miso)
1/4 cup mirin (sweet cooking sake – rice wine – alcohol evaporates during cooking)
1 tbsp rice vinegar (omit if you don’t get along well with vinegar)
1/4 cup chicken broth

Vegetables: If vegetables are not tolerated (or for a change) then add unpeeled cucumber or cooked green beans and / or cooked asparagus in bite-sized pieces.

1. Boil the pasta in boiling water (follow the instructions on the package)

2. While the pasta is cooking, mix the sauce in a medium saucepan, add the garlic and ginger to the sauce and heat to just below the boiling point. Note: The alcohol evaporates when you cook on high heat.

3. Then add the cooked noodles, lemon juice and sesame oil and stir well. Serve.

Fried winter vegetables

The key to perfectly roasted vegetables is choosing vegetables that take similar cooking times to each. Obviously, beets take much longer to cook than zucchini, for example.

Combine your choice of peeled and chopped (roughly 1 inch pieces) parsnips, pumpkin, sweet potato, daikon, beets, carrots (and any other favorites that require similar cooking time) in a bowl and drizzle with enough olive oil to make that To coat vegetables well. Salt and pepper. Then spread the vegetables out on a baking sheet (stainless steel or ceramic-coated trays are best, or line T-fal coated pans with parchment paper to protect them from toxicity). Roast the vegetables in the oven (preheated) for about 35 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit, stirring once or twice during the cooking time to avoid scorching and cook evenly.

But if you want to add softer veggies too:

Combine your choice of peeled and chopped (roughly 1 inch pieces) parsnips, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, daikon, beets, carrots (and any other favorites that take similar cooking time) into a bowl and drizzle with enough olive oil to make that Spread the vegetables well salt and pepper. Then spread the vegetables out on a baking sheet (stainless steel or ceramic-coated trays are best, or line T-fal coated pans with parchment paper to protect them from toxicity).

Roast the vegetables in the oven (preheated) for about 20 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit, stirring once or twice during the cooking time to avoid burning and cook evenly.

Then add your choice of red or yellow peppers, zucchini, fennel pieces, celery, artichoke, etc. (also coated with olive oil, salt, pepper) and mix with the existing vegetables. Continue frying for another 15 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

*Note: Use the vegetables that you can tolerate. When in doubt, all pumpkins, cucumbers, zucchini, sweet potatoes and carrots are typically well tolerated.

Do you have a favorite skinny-friendly veggie recipe you’d like to share? Please post it below …

Jini Patel Thompson is an internationally recognized expert in naturopathic treatments for digestive diseases. She healed herself from the widespread Crohn’s disease and has been drug and surgery free for over 20 years. Appeared on numerous podcast, television and radio shows in the US, UK, Canada and Australia, Jini gives people hope and visions on how to cure colitis, Crohn’s disease, diverticulitis and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) in all natural methods. Her books on natural digestive disease cures have been sold in over 80 countries around the world.