Yes this really is a post about napkins. The cloth kind, not the paper kind. In some cases, the best idea or the cleverest solution has been staring you in the face all along. This is one of those cases.
The first napkins were made of dough or bread. From the Spartans onwards, people would wipe their mucky fingers on slices of granary. I'm not sure if they ate them afterwards.
Then the Romans, being the tirelessly innovative people that they were, started using strips of cloth called sudariam meaning handkerchief.
By the 16th Century napkins were an expectation of refined diners.
In 1729 a French treatise told us this:
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| available here |
A little napkin trivia
Then the Romans, being the tirelessly innovative people that they were, started using strips of cloth called sudariam meaning handkerchief.
By the 16th Century napkins were an expectation of refined diners.
In 1729 a French treatise told us this:
"The person of highest rank in the company should unfold his napkin first, all others waiting till he has done so before they unfold theirs. When all of those present are social equals, all unfold together, with no ceremony."
And then it went all wrong...
In 1907, there was an epidemic of Polio in Philadelphia. A local school teacher realised that the cloth napkins they used were spreading the infection as they weren't being washed regularly.
He cut up bits of notebook paper and told his schoolchildren to use those to blow their nose on or sneeze into, and then to throw them away immediately.
The first commercial production of paper towels came soon after with the Scott Paper Company's sexily named "Sani-towels". From there the industry grew, producing not just hygienic receptacles for your snot, but all the superfluous little paper serviettes you get in cafes and the rolls and rolls of kitchen towel households everywhere are buying up and chucking out.
It doesn't make any sense...
It depletes our forests - which in turn causes less carbon to be absorbed and exacerbates global warming; it adds tons of paper to landfill and is an additional burden to recycling facilities.
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| Make your own just like this here |
It's as though there is no other choice. But there is.
Perhaps not the bread option: I don't fancy wiping my fingers on a slice of stale Kingsmill, but cloth napkins are a simple, fun, brilliant, sustainable invention.
They come in all different patterns and colours so you can actually express yourself rather than using the generic paper versions.
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| Now that's what I call napkin-folding technique |
You can make them into funny shapes.
They feel softer.
They save you money because you can just wash and reuse them instead of buying more and more and more rolls of kitchen towel.
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| This is on Etsy.com - search "napkin" on there and you'll be spoilt for choice |
And if you use the paper version for cleaning, the same goes: cloths. Those jay cloth things our parents/grandparents used to use are remarkably effective with a little cleaning product and again, they are environmentally and pocket friendly.
Those are the two golden attributes of a clever, forward-thinking product: green and money-saving.
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| These stickers are part of an American campaign here |
If every time you use a piece of kitchen towel, you pause for a moment and remember that it's part of a tree, and you're wiping up your spilt baked beans with it and just tossing it into a bin to go to that mysterious place we like to call 'away', it starts to take on a different meaning.
Search on www.etsy.com for 'napkin' and you'll see such a variety of styles, colours and patterns that you'll actively want to incorporate them into your meal times.
youcanarguewithstupid
