The kitchen towel is a well-known workhorse. It gets soaked with spills, polishes glassware, pinch-hits as a scrubber and lines the bread basket, but it doesn't get much love.
Maybe it's time to reconsider. Those clever, convenient towels can become favorites that serve in all sorts of functional and stylish ways.
Kitchen towels have plenty of style to offer. Witness, for instance, Crate and Barrel's sought-after collection by famed scarf designer Vera. Or try the of-the-moment appeal of classic white flour sack towels, which fit the casual-cool industrial look. Once you see your dish towels in a new light, there's so much they can do:
Potholder: Do as pro chefs do -- tuck a dish towel into your apron string, and it's at the ready not only to dry up spills but also for grabbing hot pans or pot lids. More flexible and less bulky than conventional hot pads, it also nixes the extra step required to jam your busy hands into those clunky mitts.
Place mat: Heavyweight towels with great designs can double as place mats. Position two end-to-end across your table to create the place-mat-for-two look for casual dinners.
Napkin: Barbecue and children are two messy reasons why oversized napkins can be a godsend. For casual dinners, stock up on inexpensive flour sack towels, or towels in ginghams or solids, and sub them for smaller (and often more expensive) cloth napkins.
Guest towel: In keeping with the casual theme, let dish towels with interesting designs (think stripes, black-and-white typography, retro florals) double as stylish, less-fussy towels for the powder bath. They're convenient, have plenty of room for drying hands and are durable. One caveat -- keep a couple of "guest" dish towels out of the normal kitchen chore rotation, so you'll always have a pristine one waiting to drop in place when guests are on the way.
Quick coverup: Turn a dish towel into an instant apron -- another bastion of kitchen-textile practicality -- by grabbing two pieces of sturdy ribbon and tying each piece to a corner of the long side of a towel. Tie the ties, and the towel apron can keep you from showing up at the dinner table with flour all over your black pants. (If you have kid cooks, or guests who like to pitch in, it's an easy way to offer them an apron, too.) Like your dish towel apron so much you want to keep it? Safety-pin or sew the ribbon ties to the towel, and you have an easy apron to use again and again.
