No, it wasn't ice cream or pickles I was thinking of, but I came across another blog suggesting you make a bruschetta to use up your homegrown tomatoes. Duh, why didn't I think of that? I always use them fresh in a salad, or freeze them for winter stews. Not very imaginative.

So I went to Shop Rite and found a rustic whole wheat loaf with a crusty exterior.

Came home and added the chopped up tomatoes to some homegrown basil, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper and raw garlic. Slathered this on the toasted bread and topped with grated parmigiano reggiano cheese, broiled in the oven until melted. Voila! A yummy lunch. I ate 3 slices!

I also bought a piece of salmon, which I'll have for dinner tonight along with a homegrown acorn squash. You can see food is on my mind right now.

Someone left a note on an earlier blog I did on my revised budget, again asking something many others have commented on, namely, have you ever thought about using your taxable savings to pay off your mortgage. I'd considered doing that before, but wondered about the tax bill, and wondered about depleting my available nest egg should I ever need it for something while still out of work.

But it makes perfect sense, with a 6% interest rate. I can't refinance since I'm not working, plus the balance is smaller than most banks want to bother with.

So I decided recently to throw another chunk of money at it. My taxable savings are in two funds, one a large cap domestic fund and the other an international stock fund. I won't touch the international fund becaus it's way, way down. However, I'm showing a modest profit of a few hundred dollars now on the domestic fund (although given the many years I've had that fund, I'm not sure what that return works out to on an annual basis). But anyway.

When I see the Dow is over 12,000 again, I'll make my move, selling the $17K fund and putting that toward the mortgage. That will bring the balance down to $12k, which I should be able to pay off in a little over a year?

So that's the plan. It's exciting to me to be getting so close to paying the whole thing off. My main motivation is to create some breathing room in my monthly expenses. Eventually paying off the mortgage will lower my monthly expenses by about $600. Not a huge sum, but something. And after paying this year's tax bill, it should also lower future tax bills since that money won't be earning capital gains/dividends moving forward.