I remember, years ago, I had things called pumpkin seeds. They were white, and salty, and I distinctly remember, rolling them around in my mouth and loving the salty taste.

I also remember pink pistachio nuts (I think they were pistachio nuts). That you cracked them open with your teeth and you ate the little seeds inside.

The only problem with this was that they dyed your hands and mouth a bright red. But god, were they delicious!!!!!

I am going to cut up my giant today. I'll take a photo of it all cut up so you can see what one giant squash can yield. And this was the baby of the lot.

I won't eat the seeds. I can't imagine what they look like.

Oh, I have a tip for all of you weight watchers out there. The other day I went to Shop Right. They sell a package of Chicken Sausages made by Al Fresco. These were BUFFALO CHICKEN SAUSAGES. Well, you have never tasted something so delicious in all your life. Comes 4 to a package. Now I have no idea if you can get these where you live but if you like something with a little kick (not too hot, but a little kick), you will adore these. They took the taste of Buffalo chicken wings and put this taste into the chicken sausages. I sprayed PAM in the skillet. I took my knife and made four indentations in the sausages, and then I cooked them. They plumped up and you got the grill marks. I can only imagine what these would taste like if you plut them on a grill. Even a George Forman Grill (oh I just remembered, I have a George Forman). Believe me, the next time I go to Shop Right I'm buying a few packages and freezing some and eating the rest for a few nights. I eat two at a time, with a nice side of vegetables.

These are low-fat, no carb and nothing wrong about them. They also had other flavored chicken sausages. One was Maple Apple. Can you imagine, a Maple Apple flavored sausage??? And my friend bought the Feta Cheese and Spinach stuffed Sausage??? Oh my god, I'm getting hungry typing this, AND I NEVER GET HUNGRY.

I am experimenting with things other than chicken and fish. It's nice to be able to eat delicious foods and not have it go straight to my hips.

When I get the next batch of Buffalo Chicken sausages, I'll take a photo and put it here. Then you can see the colors of the sausage.

bye for now.

Melody

I came here to tell you how great you are and how much fun you gave me this weekend with your post. I almost never have fun, so it was just great. And doing the web page of veggies instead of h.pylori was way WAY fun and people laughed and enjoyed it. (I went to an unusual forum I found and stayed up into the night laughing with people there, and without your post I don't think it would have happened. So, Thank you VERY much.)

But today... ah, today is a different story... You are making me sooooo hungry for these Buffalo sausages. My goodness, it way surpasses how hungry I was for salty seeds, and I can't go out.

Evil woman!!!!!! (LOL)

In truth I think you are an angel, figuratively speaking. Because of course I can see you are real flesh and bones. But your picture has kept coming to me, and you make me smile with you.

Thank you SOOOOOOOOOOOOO much!!!!!!!

Karen: (I believe that is your name, right??)

Thanks for the nice words. I try and keep a good perspective on life. If I didn't I would have shot myself a long time ago. But I can't let myself think that way. You see, we all have our stories, our struggles, and our losses.

I would rather laugh out loud (that is if I am able to laugh out loud), some days we have pain and really can't find anything to laugh about, but other days, the sun is shining, we go to Dunkin Donuts, we say hi to the neighbors, and we live our lives.

I had a different goal, when I became a mom 26 years ago. That goal did not turn out. We no longer have our son in our lives. Believe me, I could have ballooned to 400 lbs with no problem whatsoever. But honestly, from watching what the morbidly obese go through on the Discovery Channel, well, I learn from watching these tv shows. I knew someone that Richard Simmons helped. He weighed over 800 lbs. He got down to 200 pounds. He is now back to 800. It's a real disease, this over-eating. I thank god that something clicked in my brain because believe me it's very easy to self-medicate yourself with Ding Dongs. I don't believe I can over medicate myself with Squash, lol.

So when I find something amazing, like that Land of the Giants squash, I knew I had to post it. I made videos and I sent it to my sister-in-law. She just called me. She said "oh my god, where did you get that thing, that can feed your family for a week. I said "and that was the baby of the bunch".

I can just see myself living in Nebraska, raising my veggies behind the house, growing my own tomatoes, growing my own 6 foot squash. Taking my methyl B-12 (because I don't eat any beef whatsoever). I could live that life. I could also NOT see myself milking cows, raising chickens and picking out eggs from underneath the chickens, nor do I see myself with squirrells, raccoons, whatever (like some of my friends who live in New Jersey).

So I would like to live in a condominium on the 14th floor (where there would be no ants or waterbugs), and then I would have a hot house, where I could grow my own fresh vegetables. Oh, and a pool on the roof top would be acceptable. Now I know that will never happen.

So I go to Dunkin Donuts with Alan and have breakfast. We take what we can get in this world. That's the best we can do. Other people have much less.

As a matter of fact, five minutes ago while I was talking to my sister-in-law (Alan's sister), after oohing and ahhing over my giant veggie, she said "I just heard some bad news", It seems that Alan has a second cousin (we don't know her), She is from Brazil and two months ago, she went back to Brazil for a gastric bypass (she was not morbidly obese, and that's probably why she couldn't get it done in the states). She was just chubby (so I've been told). She was 47 years old. So she has the gastric bypass and comes home from Brazil and she's fine. So last week, she decided, because next year she's throwing her son a Bar Mitsvah for his birthday, she decided she wanted to look as best as she could. So last week she flew to Brazil for a face-lift, an eye lift, a nose job, the whole thing. Guess what happened?

The next day, she had a heart attack and she is now still in Brazil, on life support and is brain dead. She leaves behind an 11 year old and a 7 year old. Her husband is now there trying to find out how to pull the plug because it seems in Brazil, it's done differently over there when you want to take someone off life support.

I just listened and I thought to myself. Now there are two young kids with no mother.

So whatever we have, we thank our lucky starts because there are always some other people out there who lose it all in five minutes.

Imagine, first you get a gastric by-pass, two months later you want to look better and younger, so you fly to Brazil, and you get a face lift, and the next day you are on life support. Jeez. That is exactly what happened to the singer James Brown's wife. She went in for cosmetic surgery and she died.

And I've been telling Alan "oh, if I only had the money, I'd get my face done".

I'm not saying it any more.

I'm eating my veggies.

So hope you have a good day and keep smiling.

Melody

I just loved the idea that squash couldn't be used to over medicate oneself.

Yes, laughed out loud.

But gosh, the rest of your post was so sad.

Here's the thing... I could hardly move when I had tetanus... so I was up to 280, and I really looked like a truck. I don't have the dynamite bone structure you do, so I was just a flat (pudgy) cabbage patch face. Gosh, it's very distressing.

So then I was having so much sleep apnea at night, and my statistician cousin died of that... so I knew I had to lose weight.

I have a page on my site about my weight loss... because I started out eating 3 saltines and a piece of pre-sliced cheese as a combination lunch and breakfast, then I ate half of my dinner entre that they bring me, and froze the dessert, and threw the rest away.

In two weeks I'd lost 1 pound.

I starved the whole time, and 1 pound... that meant it would take me two years to lose the weight I needed to lose.

DEPRESSED.

But then something really depressing happened, I have so much stress from the court things that get so much worse because of my brain damage and the corrupt judges, and so I ate a month's worth of frozen desserts in two days.

And, I did not gain any weight.

So that showed me that my metabolism takes awhile to catch on to changes.

So then I started exercising a couple minutes a day, literally two, three, maybe four, and I began to lose weight.

But I have to be so careful about stress. I can't let myself get stressed because I can't handle it any more. It not only tightens all my muscles again, it makes it so I can barely walk, then I can't exercise at all because I'm in bed, and then I gain weight and then I can't breathe at night... and once I really saw people in the afterlife... so that scared me.

So I totally agree with you, grab from each day what you can... enjoy... and don't try for too much... a little improvement is a good thing, celebrate it.

(((((((((Melody)))))))))

Gosh, I'm so glad you found the giant of the vegetables, and shared.

Karen:

What's with the court thing? (if you don't mind sharing), if you have, I missed it. And yes, I do know what stress can do to a body.

Years and years ago, when my son still lived at home, I had bladder spasms that drove me to specialist after specialist. I thought I had this, I thought I had that. I had every x-ray, bladder test, trans vaginal this, I went nuts.

It was all stress. Everything came back negative. I now know that having my son living in my home was not condusive (is that a real word??) to my being healthy. I have learned to let go, and let god (if indeed there is a god, I have my days when I do doubt that, but then I have my days where I give Him thanks).


All I do know that stress is a killer. I once had a nurse tell me that when I was all of 19 years old, a secretary, and working in a medical department. I was having a chat with a nice older woman and she said the one sentence that I never forgot. She said "Melody, stress kills". I never forgot that.

Little did I know that my own son would be a direct cause of all the stress in my life. But I have dealt with it in my own way. We have no choice.

And believe me, I do know about not eating and you don't lose.

Don't know if you heard this story, (I've told it before on these boards). When I was around 50 or so, I began a really healthy way of eating. My doctor had gotten on my case, so I joined a gym. Now I have arthritis so this is no easy task. So I did the gym and I never looked better in my life. I had previously weighted 203 at the doctor's office, so here I am about a month or so later, looking quite trip and fit, wearing spandex shorts, and a tank top (very revealing), I walk in, he takes one look at me and goes "whoa, look at you, you look great, hop on the scale". I proudly jumped on the scale and what did it read???? 223. I never in all my life saw that number and looked the way I did. NEVER!! I went absolutly crazy in the doctor's office. I made him get on the scale, I made the nurses get on the scale and I made everybody in the waiting room get on the scale. Everybody knew their weight and I weighed almost 30 lbs more than my 6 foot 2 inch doctor. Like I said, I went nuts. He looked at me and said "what on earth are you eating to have gained all this weight?" I just looked at him and said "are you looking at the same body I'm looking at?" He just said "the scale does not lie".

So I went back to the gym, grabbed the bigges muscle guy I could find, he was about 6 feet 5 and all muscle and I said "can you please help me?" and he looks at me and says: "sure, little lady, what can I do for you?" LITTLE LADY???? no one has ever called me that in my life. I said to him "Tell me why I weigh 223 lbs". After picking up his jaw, he took me over to the scale and sure enough it said the same weight. He scratched his head and in five minutes, I had 10 bodybuilders walking around me in a circle scratching their heads. All of a sudden, one of them looked like a lightbulb went off in his head and he said to me :"have you been working out?" and I said "of course, three times a week". and he said "show us exactly what you have been doing". So I walked over to the weight machines and put on 40 lb dumbell things and I started lifting weights. I did that with about 10 machines. After they stopped laughing, they explained that I had replaced fat with muscle and one pound of muscle weighs 6 times more than one pound of fat.

Oh, by the way, I have never, never never, picked up a weight since that date. I have never never weighed myself in a doctor's office that I know what I weigh. I went back to my doctor, told him what happend. He looked dubious. Then of course, I went back to my old habits of compulsive overeating. So fast forward a few years, I go to Cornell Medical center in NYC, I stopped eating the bad stuff, started eating the good stuff, and I lost weight. Now I don't look as good as I did when I lifted weights, but I don't weigh 223 either. Thank god.

Some day, I'll get down to my fighting weight of about 150. I will look like Gwyneth Paltrow if I ever get down to that, but I'm determined.

It's all about bone structure, body mass index, muscle vs fat, all that, blah blah. I don't care. I want to be thin and look like Mariah Carey. That's all I know. So this year I turn 60. I don't dress like I'm 60, and I certainly don't feel like I'm 60. I wonder what I'll be like if I live to be 70???

What a hoot!!!

Melody

Wow, that is very interesting... about the weight of muscle.

I've been so perplexed by all the work I've been doing (a little at a time) without losing weight. I was thinking that if I was up painting for an hour a day, then I would for sure lose weight... because I wasn't in bed.

but it wasn't happening.

I thought it was because of how we have to make this huge mental effort to complete tasks when there's pain... and I thought somehow that was keeping my body in a fat stasis.

But now, I wonder if it was that I was exchanging ...

no...

it can't be that.

Because you looked great. And... I have a terror of weighing myself because I get absolutely obsessed... and then I get into major fear that I am going to gain weight... so I don't weigh myself anymore. I measure, and I have clothes that I try on and which fit more and more loosely.

So I don't weigh myself... and I can't say that I've gained weight.


Well, the thing with our kids is hard.

Did you see that movie, Riding in Cars with Boys? The end is pretty interesting... I won't tell you in case you haven't seen it.

But it's a good movie in terms of our relationship with our parents...

Okay, the court thing...

I had three properties because when I just had my 600 sq ft condo my son said he wanted to come here to Santa Fe from London to live.

So I bought a three bedroom house, rented the condo, he came and hated it and went back to London, and I cried every time I was in the house I bought with high hopes of us having this great relationship.

So I bought another house and moved into it and rented the townhouse that was making me cry.

years pass... things happen.

I move back into the condo after my tenants moved out, saying they weren't feeling well.

They'd had the sewer back up... and I'd had it fixed. I didn't really think anything of it.

Well, there had always been small sink holes, and when the tenants had been gardening a new larger one had appeared.

Okay, so there started to be sort of loud bangs... and it turns out that there was hydrogen sulfide in my condo (the bangs caused me to call around and I was told to get some air tests).

So that explained why I was falling more and bumping into stuff when I walked, and was losing memory again at an alarming rate.

The condo association had a legal duty to pay their share of the remediation, but they hired a lawyer who advised them to say there wasn't a privy pit, that it was all a broken sewer.

I argued that you can't flush bottles down a toilet, and there were a lot of bottles in the pit... but the judge favored them.

Of course there is a "previously"

This major Christian guy had borrowed a lot of money from me... sold me cubic zirconium as diamond... etc. and I wanted my $10,000 after he wrecked my car. So he filed in family court and said we were a family and I was abusing him.

He had consistently said to me that God couldn't love me because I was too interested in money, that I was always bringing it up. He considered me wanting the money he owed me to be abusive.

So I got all the papers in order to show what he owed and how I'd paid him every single thing I owed him (he then had gone on to argue that I owed him $80,000 for legal work that he'd done -- he wasn't a lawyer). And I had to read in court because I couldn't remember because I was living in the hydrogen sulfide; he on the other hand had this country bumpkin way of talking that I think he practiced because it made him sound so genuine... and the judge said in court, to him, "I believe you."

I was just shocked.

So I went home and called Pueblo, Colorado where he came from and talked with another jeweler there, and the jeweler's wife said she'd send me some of the cases against him there... she sent over 30 and then after she told me how to find them, I found another 13.

Okay.

So come the condo case and the judge says in court, "Don't worry, I'll make her pay everything she owes you."

He hadn't seen any evidence when he said that.

So when he also said he was going to have all my foreclosure cases I was a bit beside myself.

So since by this time he was not allowing me to read, I filed an ADA case against him in Federal Court... so he couldn't hear any of my cases any more.



But it ****** off all the other judges.

And my case was eventually dismissed -- despite the fact that the case the opposition had relied upon had been overturned. Only I forgot (I had tetanus at this time) that when I wanted to amend my complaint, it had to be amended, I had to attach the amended complaint to my motion for leave to amend. Failing the attachment, my case was dismissed. But I kept thinking it was because judges all stick together.... only recently did I snap to the amendment thing... (I'd done a chapter 11 earlier, and knew about the amendment thing... or else I knew about it from having sued the City of Santa Fe for taking me out of the hospital and putting me in jail for weeds... they settled for a small amount of money, about $12,500.)

Jail for weeds
http://www.health-boundaries-bite.co...for-Weeds.html

Okay, so then my tenants burned out the boiler and I ceased to be able to get rent. Major poverty. Lucky I was getting meals every day.

Foreclosures... they foreclosed my home and people were always trying to force their way in because I had so much equity... they wanted to see my home so they could get it.

Stress.

yes... I think stress is damaging to health.

So then I filed bankruptcy, then wrote a motion to please dismiss it so I could sell my single family... and the court did, and I did, and so I was all happy.

But Judge Sanchez, the one who had the restraining order against Letterman for sending bad thoughts to a woman here, foreclosed my condo with no notice to me... it was sold at foreclosure and I was still paying to have the final bits of remediation done re the privy pit...

I had it listed at Sotheby's and a Sotheby's agent bought it... He got about $150,000 in equity of mine.

So I argued in court that there hadn't been due process and the judge sort of laughed at me. I was told that he'd told the Sotheby's agent's broker that there was "no way" I'd get my condo back.

I think he was influenced by my case against the chief judge... the ADA case.

So I'm appealing.

And it's very stressful.

that probably wasn't clear...

In between I hired a lawyer... and she was just abysmal.

I also paid $7,500 interest to borrow money to redeem, and I couldn't redeem, they let the Sotheby's realtor redeem on unadjudicated liens...

Oh... see the condo association put their entire legal bill on me, and said I owed that much... and then they filed a lien. It was never adjudicated, and I'd asked at least three times.

So their liens weren't really appropriate to allow for redemption...

but... if the judge said there was no way I'd get my condo back... this sure fit right in...



Appeal
http://www.health-boundaries-bite.co...firmation.html

Reasons not to affirm
http://www.health-boundaries-bite.co...To-Affirm.html

Complaint to the bar against a lawyer
http://www.health-boundaries-bite.co...-a-Lawyer.html

So that's about it.



Are you sorry you asked?

(The Christian guy is in prison... he got $30,000 from a woman who was much smarter than me, and she got him caught. )
.

Oh my god, they put you in jail for having weeds in your yard?? They don't put rapists in jail but they put you in jail???

You have certainly had your share of stress, you poor thing.

Your life is fascinating. Are you from England originally? Do you talk with an english accent (which I adore, by the way).

And do you have a good relationship with your son??

Sorry for the questions, but sometimes it's good to vent!!!

Melody

I bored you. Sorry!!!!!

How was the zucchini????

Yummmmm?

But, yes. Jail for weeds.

Melody you are a lifter. I love your stories. I agree a lot is outlook and self talk. I have had before this many years of severe depression,anixety,ocd and without working on those areas of coping I would not be here today. You have to and though many times hard hold to hope. On a side note I have been all different weights well never heavy but being a number or size won't make you happy or better. It is important to be healthy though and to find the reason behind why you are not. Whether one is under or over there are reasons such as anxiety,depression and when you learn better coping it can help with the weight issue. I'm going to your house Melody you sound like a great cook. You got to make some yummy muffins though. Take care all and considerthis you have to laugh more. That is what they told me in treatment. Now its finding ways.

Thanks Mel. It has been a painful day and at least I am able to still laugh.