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We have a cherry pitter. It was a wedding gift and why we even registered for one back then is befuddling now, but we were young and dumb and not very practical.

And yet ... it makes about dozen or so appearances every summer, when cherries are ripe for the eating. Our girls literally squeal at every punch of the handle. Whether it's the actual punch that delights them so or the knowledge that the slowly growing mound of seedless, juicy burgundy orbs will soon be theirs is beside the point. They love the cherry pitter. And we love the cherry pitter.

We had this in mind as we went about today's story on setting up your first kitchen. What do you need -- really need -- to be able to cook decently? You certainly don't need a cherry pitter. You don't need an ergonomic cake cutter, nor do you need about 80 percent of what's in the Williams-Sonoma catalog.

Chris Koetke (below), the dean of Kendall College and a great source for our story, told us he is a knife junkie, with a collection numbering in the hundreds. This was right after we admitted to him we have a drawer jam-packed with barely used gadgets (where the cherry pitter happily resides).

We're conditioned to want more, more, more. In Koetke's view, you need three knives and a sharpening steel. We might even argue that you only need one knife, a pot, a spoon. The rest is icing on the cake.

That said, the cherry pitter isn't going anywhere.

Let's hear it -- what can't you live without in the kitchen, and what won't you ever give up?

Ah, were but Howard Hughes still alive. He would love this device.

When you take a can of soda from the shelf of your local convenience or grocery store or even from your home or work fridge, do you immediately open it and drink? Do you tap it a couple times to disperse the carbonation? Or do you run a finger or napkin along the top to collect any of the dirt, visible and invisible, before you put your lips on the can?

Do you wonder about what accumulated dirt and unseen things may be lurking on the top and around the rim of your soda can? Do you get creeped out thinking such things? Well, maybe the Cole Cleaner is for you.

The Cole Cleaner, designed by Leon Peng, is just a concept right now, but what an intriguing concept it is. It's a countertop device that uses ultraviolet radiation to disinfect any can, supposedly within 1 to 5 minutes. You stick a can in it, and wait for the LED lights to tell you it's working and that your can is now ultra-clean and much safer to drink from than it was just minutes ago.

As germophobic as I am, I can't imagine ever owning a device like this. I can't imagine who would; perhaps the same people who in addition to having you take off your shoes as you enter their homes also provide you with disposable operating room booties. Maybe this could catch on, though, at high-end/high-concept restaurants, which could charge two or three times the usual cost of a soda or soda-based drink because it's been zapped clean. Stranger things have caught on, though.