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Ranch dressing, need I say more?

Blog: Nosh On

When I was in junior high school I started to notice how other kids ate pizza. A simple slice was not good enough for them. Pizza, apparently, required a dip. Ranch dressing was the dip of choice.

I admit, I tasted it (but I didn't inhale, haha) and I liked it. Growing up in a somewhat health-conscious family, though, made it difficult for me to develop a habit of eating pizza dipped in ranch dressing. Green salad topped with ranch was another matter, especially if it was dressing made from a packet of Uncle Dan's Southern Ranch (now called Uncle Dan's Classic Ranch). I could eat that stuff straight. Even now, there's hardly anything more tempting to me.

Being an adult, I try to contain my ranch dressing eating to salads and veggies for at least some semblance of health.

I'm quite sure I'm not alone in my love of ranch dressing. I've heard that ranch dressing is uniquely American, but that doesn't mean everyone can't love it. A family friend of ours from Mexico lived in Wenatchee for a year as an exchange teacher. In his time here, he developed an affinity for ranch dressing. (Who wouldn't?) Upon returning to Mexico, he was unable to find ranch dressing, even at Walmart. Disappointed — I won't use the word "distraught" — he asked us if we could send him some packets of sauce mix. We were happy to comply and loaded a box full of ranch dressing packets, took it down to the UPS store and shipped it to Mexico.

Sadly, it never arrived. We figure that somewhere along the way someone looked inside, saw the dressing packets and knew they'd hit payday. Or someone thought we were sending drugs. Or maybe it just got lost. If you see a box full of ranch dressing packets with an address label for Mexico, can you make sure to let me know?