Seven and a half years ago, fresh out of college with few friends already committed to the grind, I used to head across the street from my office to Panera Bread, solo with a magazine.  I’d eat french onion soup or the fandango salad, browse the latest fashion trends, and try to muster up energy to make it until 5 o’clock.  Today, things are different.  The 5 o’clock part is easy peasy, but I spend my lunch breaks at the gym, at home whipping something quick together for a blog post, or squeezing in last-minute errands.  Over the years, lunch has become progressively less relaxing.

So when I was given the opportunity to slow down a bit by enjoying an old favorite while putting together a lunch-time blog post, I couldn’t have been happier.  I ordered a bowl of french onion soup with a slice of super crusty bread and a roasted turkey and cranberry sandwich and sat outside in the sunshine.  Yeah, that’s right, sunshine sitting in December.  And double yeah, that’s right, I ordered bread on top of bread for lunch.

I forgot how yum sopping up soup with Panera’s crusty bread was.  And what made today’s Panera trip even better was knowing that my soup sopping supported an organization that donated over a half million servings of soup to food banks last month!

As part of the DailyBuzz Food Tastemaker Program, I received compensation to sample a Panera Bread soup.  The opinions in this post are completely my own and based on my experience.