99: Ranch Dressing

Ranch Dressing is the perfect accompaniment to salad, chicken wings, pizza, chicken nuggets, french fries, potato chips, cantaloupe and probably ice cream. But before the creamy white wonderfulness was invented to supplant the tedium of the Alaskan ranch dressing had many different meanings.

Ranch dressing would often occur at around 5:30 in the morning. A bunkhouse full of cowboys would be snoring peacefully when out of the blue a rooster would crow outside the window. Back in them days the windows were mighty thin, so the noise would go right to the cowboys heads, and as most of them had hangovers from the night before this was extremely unpleasant. Never mind, the cowboys would stumble out of their bunks, throwing on their jeans and spurs.

That was about the extent of their ranch dressing.

Until some grizzled cowboy shot an elk out on the back forty, and had to gut it before dragging it back to the bunkhouse. Cowboys who could do this quickly and cleaning were said to be excellent at ranch dressing.

In moderns days when all they have out west is dude ranches they put wagon wheels and shit out in the yard to kind of spruce the place up with that ranch feel. There are some hifalutin designers from the city who spend their whole careers perfecting the art of ranch dressing.

When Patty and Joe go to town on a Saturday night they like to wear their finest western wear: cowboys boots, jeans, plaid shirt and cowboy hat. The bar they go to is totally decked in everything from barbed wire to longhorn skulls. The hot wings that accompany their Miller Lite are dipped in Ranch. And if an Elk were to come through the door you can bet your second amendment they would have it ranch dressed in no time.

Ranch: it’s the perfect sauce.