My Fun New Cherry Pitting Hack

 Cherries are great but they are rarely affordable for me. I might buy them 2 or 3 times when they are in season, and only when they are very cheap. I used to buy only so much at a time because they were a pain to pit. My rare purchases made it silly to buy a special cherry pitting tool.

Lo and behold, the internet yielded several ideas on options other than that tool. I'll tell you what I like best and then I'll mention the others that are also great ideas.

My new fave method is a thick plastic straw. I have about 2 dozen of these in the house and  because I think they'll be harder to get so next summer, I might choose my second best choice.

Why I like this is that I push the end of the straw into the stem end of the cherry and push. The pit goes right up into the straw! And it stays there! Or at least until others below push it out. You just need to be careful, as you always do with cherries, because even though they don't cry when you poke them, they do bleed cherry juice all over. So this is now a fun kitchen prep project instead of an annoyance as it used to be.

The next best choice for me is a chopstick!

They also suggested a simple metal pastry tip, the type you use for icing and that type of decoration...all very good ideas.

Cherry Ho!