I'm back! With Cranberries!

I'm back, with some holiday-type recipes! Things have finally slowed down in the Free!Radicals household, as during the Christmas week, the Man and I spent every day doing at least one thing with each other's families. That's fun, but exhausting.

So, have a quick tutorial on how to make cranberry sauce! I have learned that a lot of people are attached to the jellied stuff from a can, but I think it is kind of gross.

Cranberry sauce:

Pick out the bad cranberries from a 16-ounce bag of cranberries. Usually there are only a few, but I had to take out a lot this time. Put them in a saucepan.



Add 2-3 cups of water, and 1 1/4 cups of sugar. You might want to add more sugar if you like your cranberries really sweet, but I do not.


Heat over medium-high, and after a few minutes the cranberries will start popping and turning syrupy.


Though the cranberries pop, you still need to mash the berries.

And you have cranberry sauce!


Normally I add some lemon zest, but i had no lemons. So it is just as simple as water, cranberries, and sugar.

Happy belated holidays!

Lime curd

I have been doing a lot of cooking around here lately! The Man has recently become gainfully employed, and I won't start my job for a few more days, so after my class, I have the apartment to myself for a few hours.

So I made this lime curd after discovering that we had an abundance of limes in the fridge.

Adapted from here

Lime Curd

yields 1 cup


1/4 cup fresh lime juice (about 3 limes worth)
2 tablespoons lime zest (see above)
2 eggs, beaten lightly
1/2 cup sugar
5 tablespoons butter (cut into pieces)

Whisk juice, zest, eggs, and sugar together in a bowl, then set the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Add the butter, and whisk continually while cooking, until the curd is thick enough to hold marks from the whisk, about 10-15 minutes.

Strain the curd through a sieve into a bowl, and cool. Will keep for several days.

In pictures!

Whisking ingredients together.

Melting the chunks of butter.

After about 5 minutes of whisking.

This is after 10 minutes, it has thickened considerably and is lighter colored.
Aaaaand strain! This gets rid of the chunks of zest.

Deicious on pancakes, toast, or stirred into yogurt. I ended up putting it in a mediocre strawberry-lime tart, and I sort of wish I had left it plain so I could enjoy it in this form!