Hobo Potatoes

I'm super sorry for not updating for a while. I've been working on going back to school, so I've sort of neglected some of my other hobbies. However, I'll make it up to you with a very tasty, versatile recipe!

Just before we moved out of California, my man took me to a little restaurant called the Harbor House Cafe. It's a little 24-hour diner type establishment serving up all kinds of delicious foods. It's one of those places where the menu is intimidatingly huge. One thing, however, caught my eye. "Hobo Potatoes," I read aloud, "What in the hell are Hobo Potatoes?"

Hobo Potatoes are a sort of home fries, but instead of just potatoes they include onions, mushrooms and bell peppers. Along with a side of sausage, they were perfect. I cut up the sausages and mixed it in with the potatoes. The awesome thing about Hobo Potatoes is that they can be a breakfast by themselves, or make a tasty side dish to another dish. They're super simple to make, and damned tasty to boot. You can also eat them for dinner, if you're the sort who loves breakfasty foods for dinner. Follow the jump for the recipe...

Hobo Potatoes
Serves: 2 people if served as a main dish, 4-6 if used as a side.
Cook time: ~20-30 minutes
Difficulty: Easy

Hardware
-Large Frying Pan
-Knife/Cutting Board
-Tinfoil
-Turner/Spatula
-Fork
-Peeler (maybe)

Foodstuffs
-1 to 1 1/2 pounds potatoes. Any type'll do, but red potatoes are my favorite for this.
-1/2 pound breakfast sausage
-1 medium onion
-1 bell pepper, any color. I think red looks nice in this dish.
-1/4 pound small mushrooms
-Olive oil (about 1-2 tablespoons)
-salt/pepper
-1/4 tsp paprika
-optional: Cheese, eggs, bacon. See variations section after recipe.

Wash and dice your potatoes into no bigger that 1/2 inch cubes. If you don't think your potatoes have tasty skins, peel them before dicing. Meanwhile, it's time to cook up your sausage. Breakfast sausage can either be purchased as links or in a tube as just the breakfast meat, I believe the idea there is to cook them up as sausage patties. If your sausage is the link variety, you must liberate it from its casing before proceeding - you just want the meat here. Crumble up the meat into little chunks, and cook it up in the pan. Brown the outside of the pieces, then remove from the pan, leaving the fat in the pan.

As you're cooking up the sausage, wash and cut up your other veggies. Remove the outer layers of onion and dice that up roughly. To cut up the bell pepper, remove the top and pull out the center. Split it in half, and remove the seeds. Then split each half into quarters down the width. Cut each quarter into little strips or dice, whichever you prefer. Wash and slice up your mushrooms, quartering the larger pieces.

After you take out the sausage, you may not have that much fat left in your pan - this is OK. Add olive oil until you've got a thin coating of fat/oil on the bottom of your pan. Add the potatoes, onions and bell peppers, sprinkle with the paprika and salt/pepper to taste then cover with tinfoil. Allow to cook for 10 minutes or so, checking their done-ness with a fork. Once the fork is able to spear the potatoes easily, remove the foil and add the sausage back to the pan. Allow to fry up and let the potatoes get a bit of a crispy outside, about 5 minutes or so. Serve and consume!

Variations:
-To make this dish vegetarian/vegan friendly, forgo the sausage and just fry up the veggies in olive oil.
-To make this dish extra tasty, cook up some bacon in the pan before you start making this dish, then evacuate the bacon to a plate with some paper towels. You will not need to add olive oil after removing the sausage from the pan if you do this.
-You can also add cheese or scrambled eggs into the mix, as I've known some people to do, but I like to keep the dish a little simpler.