Most magazines and blogs will, with zombie-like regularity, publish a list of the "Ten Must-Have Kitchen Gadgets!" or "Eight Small Appliances We Can't Live Without!" or "What Every Baker Wants This Arbor Day!" or "Brains! Brains! Brains!" This is all so much horse pucky.

Tools are good only if they serve a purpose — your purpose. For example, I own a Spätzle press. For me, it's very useful. That's my favorite food, and I make them at least every other week from Fall through Spring. This same press gathered dust in my mother's kitchen. Useless in her kitchen, invaluable in mine.

There are tools that no-one uses or will ever use, like a chestnut knife (because we don't have chestnuts in America since the blight wiped them all out) or my Granma's nut grinder, which do serve a purpose; it's just that the purpose is just long gone, due to improved technology or arboreal plagues.

There are, however, tools that no-one will ever, ever use, because they just don't work. Some of these tools are in my kitchen.

Im-meausrably bad

Not only do I have one, I have two of the worst measuring cups. It is impossible to measure accurately with either. The older of the two, on the left, belonged to my Granma and is solid aluminum. To measure, you must look down into it. You can't sweep off excess. I keep it in memory of her and because it looks good.

The second is a gift and is incredibly inaccurate. It has a flipper that slides up and down "with the touch of a button!" The button has markings to indicate cups. The sides have ticks for ounces on one side, tablespoons on the other.When I took the photo, I'd set it to 1/3 cup by the top indicator, which showed 2 fluid ounces on one size (that's 1/4 cup), and 3 1/2 tablespoons (less than 1/4 cup) on the other. The flipper has a rubber or silicon edge, and would be great for measuring honey or molasses, if only it were accurate.

Scraping the bottom

I bought this spatula hoping to replace my old Viennese spatula, which are great for folding, spreading, lifting and scraping. It's the same shape, but with a silicone rubber over a metal body, and that hole. Now, I have other German spatulas that have a hole in the head, and I think it's there for beating stiffer batters (like Spätzle), but this one doesn't seem to beat well. When scraping, the batter falls through the hole and back into the bowl. When spreading, the icing or batter pushes out of the hole. It's heavy. It's awkward. It's sitting in my drawer. It was expensive.

Card-carryingly useless

Yeah, recipe cards. Unusable, and not because I keep all my recipes on the computer. I don't. Most are in books by my stairs or in magazines under my window seat. My own recipes are in a notebook on my counter. But when I want to share a recipe with someone, then I put it on the web and e-mail the URL. If I have to write out a recipe (and I love writing longhand), it's written onto a full piece of paper. The ingredients alone take up most of the first side of the recipe card, and then you're flipping back and forth between the ingredients and the directions.

Pick your poison

I have to admit, that one can use the chopsticks. But. No one ever does. People who don't use chopsticks want a fork, or will try with real chopsticks, before switching to a fork. No one uses the giant plastic tweezers. They are billed as "learning" chopsticks, but using real chopsticks is nothing like wielding giant tweezers.

The bowl is actually great; it's a rice bowl from a Japanese restaurant near an old job. I love it. I'd keep using it, but it freaks my pre-schooler out. He tries to set it straight.

Get a grip

Silicone may not melt at high temperatures, but that doesn't mean it doesn't transfer heat. When I use my cast iron and anondized aluminum frying pans, I like to keep a handle pot holder on the handle so that I can work without hunting for a potholder. It needs to sit on the handle for up to half an hour, without catching on fire (I set something on fire about once a year), and without absorbing so much heat I burn my hand.

Well, it doesn't catch on fire.

It's also too big for the handles, and prone to slipping off all but my largest pan. But it's a lovely blue and I like to hang it from the stove hood.

Crushingly ill-designed

This is the world's worst blender, mostly due to the square jar. Whatever is being blended can't get going before running into a glass wall and losing all its momentum. The end result is that without a lot of liquid, most of the top ingredients stop moving, and an air bubble forms at the bottom. There's lots of banging to push everything down into the blades, lots of stopping and starting, lots of noise from the blender and me.

The worst part is that it's not really broken. The design is broken, but the engine works fine, and, after an insane amount of time and banging and scraping and restarting, the soup or the chutney is blended. I keep it because I can't bear to throw out things that work.

Thankfully, friends gave me their fabulous Kitchen Aid blender they'd gotten as part of having their kitchen remodeled for a TV show (no, really), and I can crush ice, puree soup and make milkshakes in under 20 minutes. But I still have this thing, because I also can't give it away without pointing out that it is, in fact, the worst designed blender, ever. Without the caveat, I feel I'm cheating the potential recipient.

I gotta list it on Craigs List.