Today’s menu: pepperoni pizza, carrots, peach fruit cup, ranch dressing, milk
When I’ve eaten pizza in the past, commenters have mentioned that when they were kids they would put the ranch dressing on the pizza. I decided to give that a shot (see last picture).
Results: pizza of marginal flavor turned foul. I took the first bite of the ranch covered pizza and the taste combination was so foreign, so disgusting that I winced. I had to literally wipe off the ranch from the other part of the pizza. Thankfully I didn’t put the dressing on the whole pizza or I wouldn’t have had much of a lunch. I don’t have a clue how and why that would be appealing to a child or anyone! Note: I have been known to enjoy ranch dressing on salad…just not on pizza. Yuck.
PS. I know that the ranch is meant for the carrots. I did it because many readers and also kids like to put ranch on their pizza. I was trying it out. And I will never do that again.
You can't tell with kids today. They eat some weird stuff – hot cheetos, ranch dressing on nearly everything, junk food of every description.
I'm sorry to be the one to inform you of this. You're officially gross. *Goes and finds a toilet to puke in*
I like ranch on my pizza every once in awhile, but that particular pizza looks past redemption no matter what you do to it. The cheese kind of looks like plastic wrap. Ewww.
I agree. Ranch and pizza shouldn't mix. My son just recently started asking for ranch when we make pizza. ??! Now I'm wondering if it's because he's seen kids do it at school! (A-ha moment).
i think the ranch dressing was meant for the carrots not the pizza
As a vegan, I just want to ask. Who in the world thought of this? Ranch dressing on pizza – yuck! (Must be some secret poison ;0) The school's are feeding our kids crap. . .IT MUST STOP!
Ugh, my friends do that all the time, it look so nasty D:
Ew ranch with pizza thats disgusting!! That's not even pizza thats just bread on crap! xD
http://therichestmom.blogspot.com/
When I was growing up, we sometimes ordered from a pizza place that included ranch dressing with every pie. I thought dipping the crust in it was quite tasty, but ugh, not the rest of the pizza. And pepperoni pizza really doesn't need any more fat; that's like deep-frying a Twinkie.
But yes, there are some disgusting sauce combinations that occur in school cafeterias. Some of my friends mixed ketchup and manonnaise together to dip their fries, or worse, ketchup, mustard AND mayonnaise.
My friends do this a lot! Looks gross!
And the pizza looks rather nasty today.
My kids love ranch on their pizza. However I agree that your particular pizza looked highly unappealing even without the ranch. Nothing was going to fix that rubbery goo.
I put ranch on my pizza almost every time I eat it. I learned to do it back in sixth grade when I moved from a school where everything was homemade to a school that served freeze-and-thaw (not cooked.. I often found foods inedible because they were still frozen). Sometimes, however, it's the flavor of the ranch… Try it again at home with better-quality ranch.
I like ranch dressing on my pizza but only the crust. And I only eat cheese pizza (the one you had for lunch looked yukkie though). I do have to say that I'm from Texas and lots of Texans put ranch dressing on everything…There's even a dirty joke about it.
I think when I was a kid, I dunked my pizza crusts in chocolate pudding…
However, I always made sure it was just the bread part, nothing else. And it was the homemade kind…
I don't get the ranch dressing on everything phenomenon. Nobody did this where I grew up. I think ranch dressing is marginally ok on a salad if there are no other options, and that's about it.
My kids don't care for it either, except as salad dressing. This is probably a good thing because they dole it out in big syrup containers at school.
I remember doing this in elementary school. I only did it because there were other kids eating it and encouraged me to try it. I ended up liking it. Anything to make that crap taste better.
I once heard the phrase, "Ranch is the grown-up's ketchup." I disagree but if it is true, I refuse to grow up.
Ranch. ick.
You DIP the pizza in a LITTLE BIT of ranch. Not slather it on. 🙂 Plus, it really only works on thin crust frozen stuff, or your basic Pizza Hut/Dominos pizza. Not french bread pizza.
And the mayo on fries thing is HUGE in Europ. Least, thats what I've seen.
As another Texan I must say, we do indeed put ranch on everything and I do enjoy pizza with ranch on it. I think it's an acquired taste.
pizza crust dipped in good ranch is pretty tasty.
and ketchup mixed with mayo is called "fry sauce" in utah and you can get it in packages at some fast food restaurants, it's good, too!
You know, it may have been the pizza making it so foul. That pizza looks nasty – are you sure it was really pizza? Firefly is right, on Dominos or Pizza Hut pizza, ranch rocks.
I like to dip my crust in blue cheese dressing, personally. But just the crust.
However, when I was in school (10+ years ago) in the midwest, ranch went on pretty much everything in the cafeteria, and there were jugs of dressing (ranch, French, and a creamy Italian) available on a condiment table at the end of the lunch line. In theory, they were there for the salads (available every day as an alternate lunch) but people would put them on every damn thing. Ditto the other condiment options – honey, ketchup, and salsa.
I've pretty much decided that, after the end of this school year, my 10-year old will never eat another school lunch. I've been looking over your blog for a few weeks now and really had no idea how it really was. Yikes. Thanks for the wake-up call.
The ranch dressing is bringing back some scary memories of my high school days! I always brought my lunch and never bought food at my high school cafeteria because the food they served looked so unhealthy and unappetizing. Quite a few of my classmates bought their lunches every day, though, and what they bought was downright disgusting. One of the more popular lunches that a lot of the kids ate almost every day was a big bowl of French fries drowned in either ranch dressing or that horrible, neon-orange, faux-cheese nacho sauce. They would get a fork and eat these huge bowfuls of greasy fries (looked like those Ore-Ida crinkle fries) swimming in fatty, salty, preservative-laden dressing or sauce. So gross!
I think ranch in general is a midwestern thing. It's abhorrent.
There's a pizza place where I grew up, Monicals Pizza, that serves french and ranch with their pizza (mainly thin crust). ONLY on that pizza, I will drizzle it with the french before dusting it with parm. It sounds horrible, but it is fantastic. Probably even better than my beloved Chicago deep dish.
http://www.monicalspizza.com/
Ranch on pizza is really normal at the college I go to. In the dorm cafeterias they have a huge bowl of ranch right next to the ketchup on the condiment bar.
I think it would be interesting if you did a story about food in college dorms. I go to the university that has the largest residence hall system in the United States, so there are many students who are paying a lot of money to eat dorm food. But often the food they offer is not very good and does not seem healthy. For example, almost every single day there was a different form of french fries. As a college student who knows that I should be eating healthy foods it is hard to do so when I am given few healthy options. I think it is funny that we pay so much money for our meal plans and yet we still are fed highly processed and sometimes unrecognizable food.
I don't like ranch dressing on salad so much, as on pizza or chicken wings. I know this is probably fueling part of the obesity epidemic, but, like some other people pointed out, in the South, we like to put ranch on everything.
Hi Mrs.Q I've been reading your blog off and on, I'm a navy wife and hope to instill good eating habits in my kids one day. There is another place where the state of food is extremely poor, on naval boats and ships. I make it a point to bring my husband dinner on the pier just about everyday that he's on duty. I've heard stories about the quality of food that's put on his boat and it's actually really disgusting. Such as the produce that is brought there; wilty, browning, lettuce. It's amazing that people feel ok about feeding this to the men that defend our country. I'm always reminded of your blog when I hear the stories.
Follow up…I actually had friends dip Twix into ranch and loved it. That. was. SOOO. disgusting. 🙁
This was in junior high, too. Not in elementary school, where I could see kids playing with their food more often. (Well, maybe not…junior high kids are gross.)
Yes, mayo on fries is the custom in France and especially Belgium, where fries originated. Even in the fryhouses they're made from fresh, usually organic potatoes, fried twice in non-hydrogenated oil, leaving the outsides crisp and the insides soft and creamy. The mayonnaise is either homemade or tastes like homemade, none of this fluffy Hellman's/Miracle Whip/overly processed garbage, and I've not seen a mayo that contains HFCS or hydrogenated fats. You would think the combination would be too greasy, but it somehow isn't. True European fries are to American fries what a homemade pizza crust topped with buffalo mozzarella is to that school lunch pizza.
Fries are eaten frequently in Belgium, but everyone walks everywhere (including to the fryhouse), and they're part of a more balanced diet that doesn't include very much processed food at all. Also, the most usual accompaniment to fries is not a cheeseburger complete with a processed white bun, but a kind of beef stew, made with real, locally obtained meat, sometimes root vegetables, and a salad. Still not the best thing for you, but a vast improvement.
After living for awhile in Europe and losing my taste for ketchup on potatoes, I went back to the US and ordered some fries from Wendy's and a packet of mayonnaise. It was REVOLTING. Not at all the same experience.
If I were you, I'd wipe some of that grease off the pizza before eating it.
Make homemade Uncle Dan's dip with real mayo and sour cream; then have a little on real pizza and it's delish.
Sounds like you had a combination of bad pizza and bad ranch. Ranch on pizza is usually pretty good, but that pizza doesn't look salvageable, even if you had the best ranch dressing in the world on it.
Ranch is awful. Try French. Just once. 🙂
I was surprised today to find a Domino's Pizza ad on your blog. While I understand that it's nice to make a little money from something that obviously takes up a large chunk of your time, I couldn't help but feel a little unnerved. Considering the context of your blog, isn't a Domino's Pizza ad a bit like selling out?
Yes, mayo on fries is the custom in France and especially Belgium, where fries originated. Even in the fryhouses they're made from fresh, usually organic potatoes, fried twice in non-hydrogenated oil, leaving the outsides crisp and the insides soft and creamy. The mayonnaise is either homemade or tastes like homemade, none of this fluffy Hellman's/Miracle Whip/overly processed garbage, and I've not seen a mayo that contains HFCS or hydrogenated fats. You would think the combination would be too greasy, but it somehow isn't. True European fries are to American fries what a homemade pizza topped with buffalo mozzarella and fresh veggies is to that school lunch pizza.
Fries are eaten frequently, but everyone walks everywhere, and they're part of a more balanced diet that doesn't include very much processed food at all. Also, the most usual accompaniment to fries is not a cheeseburger complete with a processed white bun, but a kind of beef stew, made with real meat, sometimes root vegetables, and a salad. Still not the best thing for you, but a vast improvement.
After living for awhile in Europe and losing my taste for ketchup on potatoes, I went back to the US and ordered some fries from Wendy's and a packet of mayonnaise. It was REVOLTING. Not at all the same experience.
I don't think there was any saving that pizza! I love ranch on my pizza though! I have for as long as i can remember. When we were in Highschool, there was a daily option of tri-colored pasta. We would put ranch or Italian on that when ever we got it. Still to this day i will do that at home 🙂
ranch is good on take out pizza… like dominos or hungry howie's. out of the fridge (which is what it looks like you have there) and homemade pizza never taste good with ranch. plus, good ranch is always needed ^_^
Piggybacking on what amm15 said, college dorm food is terrible. At my college we had a few places that were decent, a sub sandwich line and salad bar in one dorm, but mostly preprocessed frozen crap, in another dorm they served almost strictly junk food except on thursdays… thursday was stir fry day. My husband's college experience was much worse. He once caught the workers bringing in the food to the kitchens at his dorm and the food was labeled "grade F, still usable". Another funny on that point, for parents weekend they would serve all these fancy dishes so that the parents thought the students were getting good food. He and his buddies would come down with tupperware and pretend they hadn't eaten food that good in months (it was the truth, but it embarassed the school). Eventually they got kicked out of the cafeteria for being obnoxious, but deceiving the parents like that after they spend hard earned money to send their children to college is sad. They should see what they're really spending their money on for their children's college.
Mrs. Q~
I've always loved the ranch/pizza combo but it really comes down to quality and in your case, lack there of:(. It's certainly not your fault but oh my..that pizza looks greasy plastic. I can only imagine what kind of ranch they gave you…(shudder).
Yeesh…
You are a brave brave soul…
Have a great weekend!
B
ooo – they did this when I was in school. Ranch or French dressing on everything. Personally, I like the spice combination of ranch, but once you add whatever makes it creamy, it makes me nauseous.
We always put ranch on our pizza at school. Even when they ordered pizza.
Every day they would set out four big gallon squirt containers full of ranch. We'd eat it on fries, tots, chicken fingers, pizza. And at about fourteen grams of fat per two tablespoons, yikes!
Mrs. Q,
What you're doing is very important and I admire you a lot, despite the paranoia which your husband did an excellent job of putting in its place. You should read his post again. But anyway, because I admire you and the blog so much, I've got to say this:
You have mentioned before that you actually like the pizza. Therefore, I think it's wrong for you to present a matter of personal taste as a school lunch quality issue by posting it on this blog. We don't need to know what foods you personally prefer, and you shouldn't bias us against certain school foods (that you actually like, no less!) by bringing a taste experiment into the mix. This was a completely irrelevant post.
Note that there are at least 20 ingredients in that ranch dressing!
@Tina 10:15: Are you basing your decision on this blog alone? How do you know what the lunches are like at your son's school?
@Mrs. Roeske 11:34: It's sad that those who serve our country are served crap food. But they did volunteer to serve, unlike being forced to go to school. Although I would think that the military would want to provide healthy food that soldiers and sailors want to eat, for everyone's benefit. Funny coming from the military, which just recently blasted school food as the cause of childhood obesity. Maybe they are suggesting that school food should be as disgusting as the food they serve so that kids won't eat it and therefore not be obese. Simple as that, right?
Re: relevance. Ultimately, it's Mrs. Q's blog and if she can't even tell us what she likes and doesn't like, well, it's going to get pretty boring. My $.02. She tried something different with her lunch and told us about it.
Re: ads. They are context and location dependent. So, you may be seeing an ad for Domino's Pizza, whereas I am seeing a picture of sushi with a Tacoma coupon offer. Mrs. Q can't really know what you are seeing. It's possible to restrict certain domains in Google ads but not whole industries, like pizza or junk food.
I agree with my fellow ranch on pizza lovers who say it has to be A. good pizza and B. good ranch. And not slathered on, but dipped into.
I really don't know if it's a regional thing, but so many things are that I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. I also don't know that it's always learned in elementary school. I never in my life saw it until I was out of high school. I think it might be more likely that adults and older siblings are passing it on to the youngsters. Or it could just be that the food is so bad in school that the kids are doing whatever they can to make it palatable!
I don't know how anyone can not like ranch dressing! Sure, some brands aren't as good as others. But I just love ranch on salad, and it's good for dipping fried foods (which I'm guessing a lot of the people here might not eat much of) and pizza, bread sticks, all that kind of stuff. I like other kinds of dressing on salad, but I always turn to my old standby. Good ol' ranch.
Here in Ontario (Toronto, Ottawa etc) most pizza delivery places provide "dipping sauce" with their pizza for dipping the crust. It's in small plastic containers, you normally get at least one free per pizza, though they sometimes charge for it. It's whitish and creamy (is it the same as ranch dressing? I have no idea, since I have never eaten ranch dressing in my life), but in some places there is the option of getting other dipping sauces, e.g. spicy, garlic-flavoured, etc. I rarely use the dipping sauce because I'm not really into condiments and dressings and I always ask for thin crust pizza when that option is available and in that case there is less crust to dip.
In Canada, dipping sauce seems to be an Ontario thing, I had never heard of it when I used to live in Montreal.
Hi Mrs. Q:
I have three quick things to say:
I used to teach pre-school & I absolutely love your blog. Thank you for eating the food for all of us & bringing this issue to light! It gives us a chance to really understand what is going on in our schools.
Two – I don't think most people understand that the amount of money you make for this blog (with the ads) is pennies. I work in online marketing & I understand (to the level Google allows) how it works. Because you posted about pizza, Google's algorithm thought Domino's would be a good ad to serve since it pertains to the content on your site. They also have something called re-marketing, and if someone visited the Domino's website & then came to your blog, Domino's could tag that user & continue to serve them ads to 'remind' them to buy a pizza even if it had nothing to do with your site.
I think that people need to not pay attention to the ads & focus on the content of the what you are doing. You often have no control & you put in a lot of time with this blog.
As for the post about what foods you 'prefer' – I think it's extremely important that you note what you like & don't like about the food & how you & the kids make it bearable. If the kids are eating their pizza with ranch, then, as part of your experiment, you should try it that way too. If you don't like it, you don't like it! The quality of all of the food items (from the meal, to the sauces that go with) are IMPORTANT in our kids growing bodies. Adults & kids alike have preferences about their food & how they want to eat it (look at the previous posts in this blog, fry sauce, mayonnaise, ketchup!). It's part of developing your food awareness & diet.
Thank you, Mrs. Q – You are The Food Adventurer!
I have to disagree with the anonymous person who said this was an irrelevant post. First of all, of course it's relevant. She's still describing what she (and the children) had for lunch that day, which is the main purpose of the blog. So what if she decided to see if she liked pizza with ranch on it? This isn't a science experiment. It's ok if she wants to add a human element of trying to see if certain things make the food taste better, and there's nothing wrong with her offering her own opinion on the food. This is her blog, after all!