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...

Delicious or Disaster?

Well my apartment didn't smell quite like the apple-y-goodness I was expecting... It smelled almost like I forgot to turn the crockpot on and left the apples sitting out. This is what it looks like after I mashed it up with my potato masher.

I can't figure out if it is brown because the apples turned brown or if it is because I got a little cinnamon happy. Depending on which I'm thinking when I take a bite it tastes really good or really bad. I found a few light colored chunks of apples which makes me think that I just had way too much cinnamon. I guess the only way to really find out is to make it again without any cinnamon.  

Cooking Adventure: Mmm Mmm Applesauce!!!

When I was a little rugrat, we often went to my grandma's house just one state over and ate the most delicious home-cooked foods around. One of my particular favorites is applesauce and there is nothing quite like Grandma's applesauce warm off the stove and into the middle of a fresh baked roll. As a result, I'm pretty picky when it comes to the applesauce I eat. Mussleman's is pretty good but I learned this holiday season that the generic in a can is a definite no-go in the book of Lori. 


Fortunately my Mom-in-Law got me this cookbook for Christmas. 1400 Crockpot Recipes. Hole-E-Bovine.


Fortunately we got a Crockpot for our Wedding and it has been safely in storage for the past year.


So now I'm trying my hand at a favorite dish and seeing if it comes out edible. Hopefully it will be delicious and worth the hassle. Since I love looking at all the pictures Pioneer Woman puts on her blog when she cooks, I decided to do the same. 

Crockpot lids are handy for holding cookbooks open!

8 apples, 1/2 cup of water, Cinnamon, and 1/2 to 1 cup of sugar depending on how you roll.

Apple Peeler/Corer/Slicer $20 at Bed Bath & Beyond. Definitely a life saver for times like these.

Toaster not needed.

I mixed together the water, sugar & cinnamon first so that way the apples could be getting covered with some juiciness instead of turning brown.

The art of lining up the apple core perfectly. Makes the rest of the process super fast!

Just spin, spin, spin away. When the core starts going through is when it might start acting up, but then it gets back on track.

Presto chango - All the peel on the plate, the core still on the thing-a-muh-jig and a sliced apple ready to become...

A chopped apple!

In to the pot to keep them pretty.

Stir em up with a spatula so as not to scrape the stoneware,

set on low and go on with the rest of your day/night.

For me it was about 8PM when I started getting everything ready and 8:50PM when I took the last picture. Tomorrow I'll get to wake up to a house smelling like apple-y-goodness which will hopefully lead to a good day back at work :-)