Winter Farmers Markets? & Crockpot Chicken Tortilla Soup

So yesterday, I was visiting my favorite sites, and when I was on Tom’s site, I linked to another site The menu coach chronicles, and read an article about year round Farmers Markets.  One of my new years resolutions is to try to buy foods closer to my house.  According to the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, the average miles for food to come to the Chicago-land area is huge!  For example, grapes travel approximately 2,143 miles, broccoli is 2,095 miles, asparagus is 1,671 miles, apples is 1,555 miles, sweet corn is 813 miles, and squash is 781 miles!  So I was intrigued when I saw a link to Local Harvest.  By visiting Local Harvest, you can put in your zip code and you can find out where local farmers are selling food in your town.  When I entered my zip code, I found two local churches that host a variety of sellers, such as honey, herbs, cheese, meats and produce.  I love farmers markets in the summer, so it will be nice to go them in the winter too! Another idea if you want to buy more local foods is through a food co-op.  Our elementary school offers one, and Local Harvest will direct one that is close to you.  Basically you decide what size basket you want and it is filled with local produce from local farmers. 

On another note, my first goal of the New Year food wise, is for the next two weeks, I am getting real with portion size.  Over the holidays, I didn’t pay as close attention as I should have, so now I’ve gotten out my food scale, I’m weighing cereal and snacks, meat, cheese, etc…  I’m going to see what type of impact it has on my weight loss efforts to just keep portions in check! 

And waiting for me when I get home tonight is my Chicken Tortilla Soup cooking in my crock pot.  It took 10 minutes of prep and I was done.  I’ve posted the recipe before, but basically, I took 1 small green pepper, diced; 1 small onion, diced; 2 garlic cloves, chopped; 1 jalapeno, diced; 1 can condensed tomato soup; 1 can diced tomatoes (14.5 ounce can) and about 6 cups of chicken broth; 1 tsp chili powder; 1 tsp. cumin, and 4 frozen chicken breasts.

The best part is when I get home, the chicken is so tender, it just shreds as soon as you take it out of the crock pot.  I’ll take the chicken out, shred it, put it back in the crock pot and serve it with tortilla chips, a little shredded cheese and sour cream on top.  Its so good!