The Ragas Report

Tales of adventure from the exciting lives of Matt and Traci Ragas
About Me

Matt, Traci, and Clark Ragas live in Chicago.

Matt is a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, though he called the Sunshine State home for over a decade before moving to Chicago. Traci hails from St. Petersburg, Florida and has never lived more than 45 minutes from the Gulf of Mexico.

Clark originally hails from - well, we aren't totally sure. We're just blessed to have him in our family. He's a "rescue dog" as we say. :)

Here is where you can learn all about our new life in the big city.

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July 2010

 

New Buffalo, Michigan

We headed out to New Buffalo, Michigan this weekend for a quick trip to the other side of the amazing and huge lake, known as Lake Michigan. 

The pictures don't do the lake justice. There are waves (on a lake!?!), seagulls (if felt like we were back on the Gulf coast), and loads of people sunning, making sandcastles, riding jet-skis and playing in the water - it is truly a beach, in every sense of the word. New Buffalo is part of Harbor Country (a region of eight lakeside towns) and is less than an hour and a half from us. 

We had fun and a little bit of Michigan Time. (Menus and signs all refer to this thing called Michigan Time - at first we had a feeling it had to do with the fact that New Buffalo is in the eastern time zone, but then we thought it might have to do with their way of having a little more of a laid back attitude, either way we liked it!). 

Posted by Traci Ragas 
 

Beautiful pictures from our walk to Lake Michigan

We took a nice walk this evening to the lakefront.  Matt and I being water people (can't get us too far from some body of water, before we get cranky) were blown away by the beautiful views of Lake Michigan and the city.  

Here are some pictures, but they don't do the view justice! 

Posted by Traci Ragas 
 

Bánh mì and the Chicago French Market

What can I say. Sometimes it takes us a little longer to try something (perfect example - text messaging) but when we do we watch out. We've heard of  bánh mì before (Matt has, at least), but we hadn't yet tried it. Today our lives changed. We went to the Chicago French Market in the Ogilvie Metra Station. After our trip to Geneva last year, Matt and I fell in love with food markets in Geneva, when we visited the Halle de Rive for several of our meals. When we found out we had something similar just a few stops away on the Green line, we knew we had to go. 

 We walked around the different vendors: a butcher, a baker, even a soapmaker (you thought I was going to say candlestick maker, ha!).  Pastries galore, gelato, homemade pickles, beautiful olives. Basically a dream for people who like food. 

Matt spotted it first - Saigon Sisters. We placed our order (Matt got the Porky and I got the meatball). They were amazing!  I wish I could explain better, but light, refreshing, just delicious. These weren't the big hoagies I've had before with lots of tomato sauce and cheese, these were on good solid bread with a little sriracha sauce, cilantro, ginger, scallions. Matt's was perfectly cut meats and a hoisin glaze. Amazing! 

So don't be surprised if you see our next post - on our quest of more bánh mì!  I can't wait. 

Posted by Traci Ragas