My friend Naomi’s birthday is June 1, and it’s been a tradition in her family that she always receives a bag of cherries. When I’m just eating cherries by themselves, I don’t mind popping the whole thing in my mouth and working the pit out during the chewing process. But if you want to use cherries in a smoothie, tart, or other recipe, you’ll want to pit a bunch of them at once, sans saliva.
Food52 has a great workaround for those that don’t have a cherry pitter. All you need is a beer bottle and a chopstick. Put the cherry on top of the bottle, push the chopstick through the cherry, and voila! You have a pitted cherry. Being someone with a less-than-robust arsenal of kitchen tools, I find tool hacks like this pretty handy.