I too have issues in digestion. I've found some foods much harder to digest. A lot of vegetables are surprisingly hard to digest. Things like broccoli take a good while. With things like that it's better to cook them until very soft/mushy which is something many wouldn't want. For me, mashed potato (sweet potato too) is good and meals that have mashed potato such as shepherd's pie, fish pie or the like are much friendlier on my stomach than a lot of foods and can contain decent calorific content. There's some decent vegetarian alternatives for filling those sort of tray pies these days. Various pulses are useful. Particularly butter beans, kidney beans and lentils. But they do need cooking well I feel. If you ever had Caribbean rice and peas and liked it I have a great easy recipe I based on that but I use cous cous instead of rice. It's quite calorific but in a good way and it's easy on the stomach.
Ingredients - all selected for ease, speed and convenience.
Cous cous
Fresh coriander/cilantro
Thyme
Onion (red and/or white)
Coconut oil
Salt
Pepper (white is my preference)
Stock cube or concentrated liquid stock. (I like chicken but veg stock works too)
Red kidney beans (they can be bought precooked and ready to go in cartons. These are ideal because they contain juice that had lots of flavour)
1 scotch bonet chilli (optional) (these can be bought and frozen and used straight from the fridge. I find the yellow ones work best anf aren't too spicy, just flavoursome)
Garlic or garlic paste or if you prefer garlic powder is fine too.
Mushrrooms (optional)
Method-
Boil kettle and pour boiled water over cous cous to just above fill line. The idea is to avoid fully soaking it because we're going to add some more moisture shortly. It's just to get it started. If using the scotch bonnet pepper then this can go i. Now too and so can a sprig of thyme.
Finely chop an onion, some garlic (if using fresh) and coarsely chop some mushrooms (if using them)
Put a generous spoon of coconut oil in a frying pan with reasonably high walls. High enough to contain the whole of your end meal/cous cous. The coconut oil will add significantly to the flavour of this recipe and replaces coconut milk from the traditional way of making rice and peas.
Warm the oil ready to fry the onions and mushrooms.
Get the onions frying (and mushroom if using them. It's a nice addition but totally optional)
Gently fry the onion (and mushrooms if using them) until they start to get some browing started.
Drop a sprig of thyme in but try not to let it get frazzled. It shouldn't be a problem because we're about to start filling the pan which will cool the oil.
Throw in your chopped garlic or squeeze in your garlic paste. If using garlic powder then that can go in at a later point.
Pour in your cous cous. You will probably need to fluff it up with a fork to get it out the bowl.
Now pour in kidney beans so that you'll have a generous amount (kind of like the ratio of rasins in a fruit cake) and pour in a generous amount of the liquid they're in but bare in mind we're going to add a little stock and we don't want to drown the cous cous, over saturating it. The good thing is that if you go a little too heavy on the liquids you can simmer it off but it's better not to have too. Though I will say that doing that will create more concentration in the flavours.
Now you can throw in your powder garlic if you're using that. Be careful not to over so it.
Now give eveey thing a good stir. We want to fry the cous cous and other ingredients an bit like frid rice however this will have more of a paella consistency due to the liquids and small grained cous cous. It won't be runny but it will be quite moist, thick and rich.
Now it's pretty much done. At this stage it's a case of fine tuning to get it to the consistency you like and to add some stock cube to help round out the flavours. If using liquid stock it might be a good idea to mix it with your red kidney beans and juice and put those in together at the same time.
Now keep frying and let it sit frying just long enough to kind of catchcand brown before stiring and repeating. Do that a handful of times until you feel satisfied with what you're looking at. The smell will have you licking your lips at this point.
You can grab a bowl as it's time to munch.
Dish up and add salt and pepper to taste. If you prefer you can salt it in the pan but save the pepper until you plate up.
Now tear up some fresh coriander/cilantro and throw it on top. You can mix it in a little if you like.
Tuck in and enjoy. This stuff can almost be swallowed with chewing lok. You'll always wish you made more!
It's odd. Before this happened I ate so well. Admantly stuck to a balanced diet. However attacking this with the most logically healthy diet judt made things worse so I had to reevaluate. Spinach is pretty good because you can wilt it and mash it into other stuff like potato so you get your protein and macro nutrients. Ironically all those things that are great for you such as nuts and grains can actually be problematic if your digestions in a bad way. I think you have to step back and nurse yourself back to health to be able to then continue eating those things without issue. It was really counter intuitive for me. Especially after years of staunchly turning to those types of things.
Manuka honey! Decent manuka honey can work magic. I've used it to heal rashes on my hands before now. I was a kid and thought it was really odd when my mom made a shealth and wrapped a bandahe around my honey soaked finger. I had this weird condition with all these water welts. My skin was red raw and I could not find a way to fix it even after all the creams at whatever the doc gave me. I think it was from washing up liquid reacting with my skin. Either way, a day with the honey on it and it was well on the way to healing. I was amazed. Since then I've used it for various things but having seen what it did there I figured it must have potential for doing the same for my poor digestion. Turns out theres some scientific explainations for it now but at the time my kids mind thought it was magic lol.
There's also some drinks named fortisip that are given to cancer patients or people with significant digestive problems. They're only small bottles and taste pretty decent. If you ever had nutrament or nurishment drinks it's pretty much like that but with more medically sound vitamins and nutrients in. Kind of like a healthy milkshake lol. You can buy them without prescription. I lost 5 stone in 4 months due to digestive and nervous system issues and those things kept me alive. If you were to drink a coupke of bottles per day on top of basic meals you'd put weight on quite quickly. You can actually live solely on the drinks themselves.
EDITED TO ADD A RECIPE.