Welcome to Planet Ranch!  My personal tribute to the world's best condiment, ranch dressing.

Just to make sure there isn't any confusion, here are some graphical assistants:

What Planet Ranch is all about:	What Planet Ranch is NOT about:

If you are looking for what's on the right, here are some links you might like:

www.theranchman.com

www.ponderosaranch.com

www.parkerranch.com

www.ranchvision.com

And thanks to GackMan for finding yet another kind of ranch!

www.thunderranchinc.com

The History of Planet Ranch
or
Every Ranch Has a "Special Purpose"

Eventually, I may post the history of ranch dressing. If you want, you can read the full history at the Hidden Valley web site. For now, here is the history of how this site came to be.

I've always enjoyed good dips with potato chips. Like the rather zesty Hidden Valley Party Dip, or Lipton's French Onion Dip. I was raised in an "Italian Dressing Family" when it comes to salad. I still enjoy Italian on a salad every once in a while, but I do prefer ranch now. Anyway, I pretty much lived in a world where ranch had only one purpose, and that was to be dip for chips. This continued for most of my teen years.

Then I discovered JoJos (large potato wedges that are deep fried)at the Safeway down the street from school . These came with little containers of ranch, and they were great! I'd order 1/2 a pound of JoJos, and then fight to get some ranch.

Deli Person: You want ranch with these?

Me: Yes, 4, please.

Deli Person: Well they only come with two.

Me: I know, I'll pay for the extra ones.

Deli Person: OK, they're 25 cents each?.

Me: Yes, that's fine.

Even though I had to go through this routine EVERY time I bought JoJos, I continued to do it at least once or twice a week.

Eventually, I started putting ranch on my salad when I was at a salad bars. Then, I started getting into eating appetizers at various 24 hour dinners. Potato skins, onion rings, curly fries, poppers; it seemed like everything tasted great with ranch. I even tried it on a Pizza and I loved it. Now, my list of foods that go with ranch is just massive.

I started to realize some very important things, like the differences between flavors of ranch. And I started to see that different foods tasted better with different flavors and types of ranch. Ranch A went good with Food A, C and E. But Ranch B went better with Food B and D. It's like every ranch has a "special purpose" (I'll go into this in more detail another time).

Now, this had pretty much always been in the back of my mind. I knew I liked it a lot, but no one really thought I had a problem or any thing. Then one day, a very observant friend, David, told me about how he had noticed my eating habits. He said that the food I ate was just a "conduit for ranch dressing". He seemed to think this was rather interesting, and he commented on it often.

One day the idea came up that maybe I should have a web page dedicated to my "ranch addiction". I thought this might be a fun thing to have and I started to think of names for it. My friends and I came up with a few good names, and several bad names. Some of the names I really liked a lot were already taken. Like ranchman.com This was actually taken by some guy who sells ranches..

Eventually, we came up with planetranch.com. It was perfect. It says a lot, I think. There have been a lot of "Planet(something)" web sites, so it's a recognized name as a fan type site. The Planet name implies a lot of ranch, or a lot of something related to ranch. Anyway, you get the idea.

So, I had the site up for a while, but I was suffering some sort of a block. I was pretty bent on using flash buttons for navigation. I'm not sure why though. I was having a hard time coming up with ideas, and I just spent a lot of time tinkering with the buttons and I never really put up any content. Then, one day, I came up with the idea for "What I Ate With Ranch Today". And I realized that I couldn't use the buttons with that much text. So I dropped the buttons and went to text menus, and now the ideas are just flowing through my head.

So, that's where we are now. I've got some more ideas, and I'll be updating the page a lot in the near future. So check back often for new stuff.

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