Little practical kitchen gadgets that really work are to be treasured. Sometimes you see an item and buy it, and use it often and never see one like it again for sale anywhere. So the solution to that is to treasure what you have, look after it and use it with gratitude for human ingenuity.

I once owned a cherry pitter, but no longer have it. I've no idea what happened to it. It was a small, square metal device with a small blunt, metal plunger. You insert the cherry, push the plunger and presto! sans pit. Yesterday it took me almost a half-hour to pit enough cherries to bake a decent pie. using my thumbnail to pry the stones loose. The end result was a bowlful of pitted cherries and two very stained hands..

I also have a small useful device meant for hulling strawberries, and I use it often. After use and wash, I place it carefully in the same place so when I need it again I can just reach for it. I'd lost it too, once, and couldn't imagine where it had ended up. As it happened, it ended up in the compost pail. It was only a year later when my husband emptied out the composter to spread the finished compost as mulch in the garden that it was discovered and returned to me.

So I baked that cherry pie, with a top crust befitting a cherry pie, using another little device I've had for a long time, to crimp the edges of dough for a lattice top. It's a little crimp-wheel that revolves on a stem, made of plastic, and I've had it too for many years. In the summer months I bypass using the kitchen stove and use a small counter-top convection oven instead and it works like a charm.

For fruit pies in particular I use a pie dish that our younger son produced for me, out of clay about ten years ago; it needs to be hand-washed, not placed in the dishwasher. To roll out pastry dough I use another kitchen item my son made for me even years earlier, a rolling pin. My idea of a well-equipped kitchen.