Today, for some reason, I was feeling nostalgic for the time I spent working on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. I was an office manager for a company and our office was on Wilshire. I really enjoyed the years I spent working in that area. I would sometimes walk to the beach in Santa Monica from my office during lunch. Sometimes I would walk that way and stop at a park to watch a group of older Italian men play Bocce Ball at the park, a lot of times I would go to lunch with a friend from work, but many times I was so busy that I couldn’t get away at lunch so would stay in the office and enjoy what I’d brought from home.

On those days, I would bring a baked potato, cottage cheese and salsa. I would stuff my baked potato with the cottage cheese and top it with the salsa … it was actually quite tasty. I remember one time they were going to be filming a car chase scene in our building’s parking garage. We couldn’t leave for the entire day, by car, since the parking garage was going to be blocked off for filming. After a few years, I moved to another company that was a little further east on Wilshire. That’s when I started working for Dole Food Company. Their office was also on Wilshire Boulevard, but on the corner of Wilshire and Westwood. That was a great location for me as well because my husband was a student at UCLA and we would meet in Westwood for lunch. Such great times that seem like only yesterday, but are many years ago.

I don’t know why I was thinking about my time spent on Wilshire today, but it put me in the mood to have a stuffed baked potato for lunch. I had a potato that needed to be used, as well as broccoli in the refrigerator, and a bit of lite mozzarella cheese. Before I knew it, my lunch plan was formed.

I microwaved the potato for 7 minutes on high (the cooking time for your potato will depend on the size of the potato). While the potato was cooking, I boiled my broccoli in a small pan of salted, boiling water. Once the potato was cooked through, I melted most of 1/4 cup of shredded lite mozzarella onto the potato (saving the rest of the cheese to be added to the top of the potato).

By this time, the broccoli was done cooking as well. I added my drained broccoli onto the melted cheese and added the rest of my quarter cup of cheese to the top of the broccoli and heated it for another minute (just to melt the rest of the cheese a bit).

I topped everything with salsa and enjoyed my lunch.

Ingredients

• 1 baked potato

• 1 cup broccoli

• 1/4 cup shredded lite mozzarella cheese

• pinch of kosher salt

• pinch of pepper

• dollop of salsa

Directions

1. Cook potato in microwave (I cooked mine for 7 minutes …adjust the time depending on the size of your potato. Seven minutes was for a larger size potato.)
2. Cook broccoli in salted, boiling water.
3. Sprinkle kosher salt and pepper onto potato.
4. Melt most of the 1/4 cup of mozzarella onto the cooked potato, by microwaving.
5. Add drained, cooked broccoli to cheese and potato. Top with the rest of the cheese and heat for another minute or so.
6. Add salsa.

Enjoy!

Until next time, Kris