Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

“Nothing is invented and perfected at the same time.”

—ENGLISH PROVERB

I First Realized that the Creamy, pleasantly sour buttermilk-based condiment called ranch dressing was no longer simply something you put on your salad when I heard comedian/television personality Jay Leno on the radio one morning exhorting me to try “Cool Ranch-Flavored Doritos.” Since ranches themselves are generally composed of things like fenceposts and manure, pickup trucks and barbed wire, I figured out pretty quickly that the “ranch” with which these then-new corn chips were flavored probably wasn’t a ranch ranch. But that the ranch in question was in fact ranch (salad) dressing was not an easy notion for me to digest.