Dear Utah,

Kenneth, aka, NBC's greatest page ever, once said "I think there's a lot about this world that we don't understand, like the afterlife or how bread becomes toast".


You know what else I bet Kenneth wouldn't understand?  Utah's obsession with ranch dressing.  Maybe it's not limited to Utah, but I swear, it's not a party if ranch dressing isn't invited.  Also, in Utah it's not even ranch dressing.  It's simply ranch.  You will commonly hear "where's the ranch?!" at any event involving food.


When I first went to college, which granted was in Idaho, (so maybe this post should be "Dear Utah AND Idaho") I was at Cragio's (or maybe we were ordering pizza late one night after curfew.  I can't really remember.  So many stories from college somehow involve pizza.  Riiiiiiiight?  Who's with me?) with my roommates and one of them insisted that we don't forget the ranch.  Ranch?  With pizza?  I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt since she was from Ohio but, the more and more I ate pizza in Idaho with more and more different people EVERYONE currently residing in Idaho had ranch as a dipping side. 
  
When I was a cycling instructor the fitness activities board went on a retreat and the coordinator told us that the first thing she made sure she bought was ranch dressing.  She said, to quote "I didn't even know what we'd be eating yet, but I knew we had to have ranch".  


When I moved to Utah the ranch dressing madness only continued.  I quickly learned that ranch was not limited to salad and pizza.  People put it on EVERYTHING.  Even just recently at work, someone had to make sure that ranch would make an appearance at the baked potato bar.  

The other day I was at the grocery store when I almost stopped dead in my tracks.  

This one grocery store had more types of ranch than I could possibly imagine.  There were different brands, different sizes and different flavors.  Then there were individual dipping sizes and powder mix in case you wanted to make your own dressing at home.  I was in total shock.  I am not kidding when I say there were at least twenty varieties of ranch dressing.  TWENTY.  Read 'em and weep ladies and gents.  I couldn't even adequately capture all of the varieties in these quick shots.  

Although, I will admit, that the bacon flavored ranch almost caught my attention.  Because bacon makes everything better.