For about three months now, Jayden has been eating according to his Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO). It hasn’t always been easy, but we are catching on to it. There are still some kinks that need ironing out, but overall the SIBO diet is doing wonders for Jayden, which makes the difficulties worth it.
One thing that I really struggle with though, is convenience food for SIBO. Let the record clearly show that I don’t really care for convenience foods, but they are a necessary evil on nights that I have to attend my classes, or nights when cooking and cleaning up after just won’t happen. Let’s face it, we all want to order a pizza once in a while and skip the formalities of domesticity. Well, Jayden can’t have pizza, or bleached grains, or hot dogs, or Kid Cuisine. When his nurse aid comes here on Mondays and Thursdays, when I have to attend classes, heating up some pizza rolls or or making some hot dogs just doesn’t fit in with SIBO.
To accomodate SIBO requirements, I make dinner early on in the day, so the nurse aid can reheat it while I’m in class. Yet, sometimes I don’t even want to do that much. I sometimes babysit a three year old. Being that I’m not really used to children who possess the ability to get into things, I often tire myself out trying to keep my house to my OCD standards while he pours juice into Play-Dough jars. When it comes time to making dinner, sometimes, I just don’t want to.
So what am I doing to make things easier? Well, planning ahead helps. One of the many things Jayden can’t have is chicken nuggets. UNLESS… they are made from unprocessed meat and whole grain flour for breading. Challenge accepted.
I created these chicken nuggets in order to accomodate Jayden’s SIBO requirements, but they are now a big hit in my household. Jayden, my husband, and his two (diva) daughters love them. So does the lil boy that I babysit. I figured they must be pretty good. The only problem is, making them is somewhat of a pain in the ass. So, the best option is to make them ahead of time and freeze them for use at a later date.
I figured if everyone in my house likes them, others would benefit from them as well. So, here’s I make my SIBO friendly chicken nuggets:
- Chop up some chicken breasts in to nugget sized pieces, set aside
- Pour some unbleached White Wheat flour onto a plate (yes, there is such as thing as whole grain white wheat. There’s a particular wheat plant that is lighter in color than others. I use that so as not to alarm the kids with ideas that they are about to eat something good for them)
- Add salt, garlic powder, onion powder, pepper and seasoned salt to the flour and mix. Don’t be afraid of over seasoning, just use the salt judiciously.
- Beat some eggs, add the same seasoning to the eggs.
- Rinse the chicken pieces with cold water and dip them in the flour.
- Dip the flour into the egg mix, and coat with flour again.
- Drop the nuggets into some hot oil and fry until cooked through. I have used a deep fryer for this as well, but I prefer the skillet. Parents who are counting calories may want to bake the nuggets instead, but I don’t know how it’ll taste, as I haven’t tried.
My husband and step-daughters love these SIBO friendly nuggets with sweet and sour sauce. I like them with honey mustard. Jayden loves them with ketchup. What will you dip YOURS in?