Warming Up In Winter With Panera Soup

Hey guys, thank you all so much for the sweet comments yesterday about my asthma diagnosis. The comments really mean a lot to me, and now that I am mostly done with a school project that has been sucking the life out of me, I am very excited to get to comment back to everyone. It feels weird to me to consider myself as having asthma since in my day to day life I have no lung problems, and for that I should feel really lucky. I know that as long as I'm careful when I'm running or exercising intensely this will be no big deal. To me, this is the best case scenario. I think it is a great personality quality when someone can take a negative and spin it in a positive light. It is definitely not something that comes easily to me but with practice I'm getting better. For instance, one of my closest friends Maile was in town  on vacation recently. She lives in Hawaii now so it's easy to focus on the negative that I never get to see her. But since she was in town for a few weeks I focused on the positive that we got a few girls nights together. Another negative was that it has been frigid lately. I'm not a lover of cold weather. Instead of thinking of the dark and dreary days winter brings as a bad thing I focused on the positive: cold weather brings comfort food! So to combine two positives into one Maile and I decided to meet up for a girl's night at Panera and shiver away the cold weather with some warm soup. I love Panera, if you follow me on Twitter or Instagram you know I go there pretty frequently. And as much as I love it Josh loves it even more. He has giftcards galore for Panera, it's one of his favorite places to go and do schoolwork. I was really excited when Panera sent me a giftcard and asked if I would review their soups. I never need an excuse to enjoy Panera! I love walking in to all the bakery items. They make me feel so happy and tempt me every time. Maile and I were super indecisive about what soups we wanted to fight the frigid air and our cashier was so helpful and patient. He offered us the soup menus, described them in more detail to us, and never once rushed us or cut us off. He even posed for this picture! Panera's customer service gets two big thumbs up in my opinion. If you're ever wondering what Panera's daily soups will be (they rotate some while others are a daily item) check out their soup website. My favorite soup is a daily item now but I remember when I first started coming to Panera and it wasn't. Checking the soup website is helpful so you know when to go to get your soup fix on. After much deliberation about getting another soup I ended up ordering the one I always order. Why mess with perfection, right? I love Panera's broccoli cheddar soup. Whenever I'm craving soup it's the first one to come to mind, when I'm sick it helps me feel better, and it is the perfect hearty soup for a cold day. I was so excited to try the broccoli cheddar in a bread bowl. As popular as they are I've never tried Panera bread bowls before. It was really filling and the broccoli cheddar was as delicious as ever. It was also nice to have built in bread to dunk into the soup! :D Maile got their Sonoma chicken stew and loved it. We had fun girl chatting and hanging out while we ate. I love the atmosphere of Panera and how it just feels like a nice place to spend time. And now sadly Maile is back in Hawaii but we made the most of the time we had while she was here. Life is busy and the holidays are extra hectic. Take some time to relax and enjoy the season, take some time to girl talk, take some time to take a friend out to lunch. You'll be glad you did. :) Question of the Day: Are you a Panera fan? What's your favorite item on their menu? Panera Bread sent me a giftcard to review their soups and is sponsoring this post. All opinions are my own. And my opinion is that Panera Bread rocks. :D

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