Roasted Italian Sausage & Potatoes

What I love about this meal is that there are just a handful of ingredients, they are really common, and it is  such a cinch to make! Some days I can do some pretty spectacular work but most of the time I get home from work and have pretty much zero motivation to cook real food. 

True story right here: When I was living by myself for the summer every day I had cereal for breakfast, a turkey sandwich for lunch, and a PB&J with some Oreo's on the side for supper. Not exciting, but I didn't starve to death so that was good.

My goal this semester is for a couple times a week (can't start out perfect or else you're almost guaranteed to fail) to eat a real dinner at the TABLE with Husbind. This means no TV and then if he doesn't have to get to homework right away, we'll take some time and he kicks my trash at Skip-Bo. I'm currently behind 175 points I think... That said - this was a perfect recipe to start out with because it is that easy!

For those who are like my mother and need to follow a recipe to the letter - here ya go!

Ingredients:

• 1 pound sweet and/or hot Italian sausage, cut crosswise into thirds (or if you want to be healthy and all, you can use turkey sausage)
• 1 pound small red potatoes, each cut in half
• 1 large onion, cut into 12 wedges
• 2 red and/or yellow peppers, cut lengthwise into 8 pieces
• 1 tablespoon olive oil

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 450° F.
2. In 15 1/2" by 10 1/2" jelly-roll pan, combine sausages, potatoes, onion, peppers , olive oil, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon black pepper; toss to coat.
3. Roast sausage mixture 30 to 35 minutes or until potatoes are fork-tender and sausages are lightly browned, stirring once halfway through roasting.

For those who are like my dad and myself this recipe is really easy to alter without screwing up. I added more potatoes, cut the bell peppers into more pieces, brushed with olive oil instead of tossing (because who wants extra dishes to wash?) and then sprinkled everything with Rosemary & Oregano. I cooked mine for the full 35 because I'm a little paranoid about meat being cooked all the way and Family Guy wasn't over yet. 

This recipe probably technically should serve 4 of those imaginary people that they design portions around, but in reality we got about 3 meals out of this. If I were having peeps over, I would probably double the recipe and bust out a roasting pan or something. 

I recommend Johnsonville Mild Italian Sausage if you're lost at the store. I've eaten quite a bit in my day, and Johnsonville is my go-to brand for Italian sausage. The Hot would be tasty too, but I think it would leak out way too much of the hot juice all over the place. 

Oh and don't forget to foil your jelly-roll pan. I would hate to be stuck scrubbing this bad boy...

Blogging on the go!

Here is my first dance with the Blogger app - let's see if it works!

Quite often I have stuff I would like to share, whether it be recipes, good books I've read, or a hilarious picture of my oh so adorable hellians. Also quite often, I forget about these things before I get to my computer and in the rare instance I do remember, I even moreso rarely have the time. So I think I shall give this a go.

So now it's up to you, my friends and familia, to follow along so that way maybe someday I can take the plunge and purge my life of facebook!

Today's picture is one I took a few weeks ago of my little Hellians trying to get at Husbind's Red-Hot dried Apple slices.