Today is our last day visiting my parents for our Thanksgiving vacation, so I took Mom & Dad to lunch at one of our favorite restaurants: Panera Bread! This is one of the few restaurants in town that I feel is actually healthy, and a great alternative to the many surrounding fast-food restaurants. Panera Bread was so generous to send me a gift card to try one of their soups, which is just perfect timing for this cold weather. We each got the “Pick 2” deal, where you can choose from a soup, salad or half sandwich. For their Saturday soup menu, they had french onion, vegetarian creamy tomato, low-fat chicken noodle, broccoli cheddar, low-fat black bean, and cream of chicken & wild rice soups. My dad and I tried the vegetarian creamy tomato soup, and my mom tried the broccoli cheddar soup. Both soups were delicious, and tasted to fresh! The tomato soup was made with vine-ripened pear tomatoes, fresh cream and hints of red pepper & oregano, then topped with Asiago croutons. It is hard to find a tomato soup I like, but Panera’s tomato soup is definitely in my top 3. The soup came nice and hot (don’t you hate cold soup?!) and it was creamy, but still had a great texture from the tomato pieces. I also did not find it too salty, which is a frequent complaint of mine when trying new soups. Do you have a Panera Bread near you? Have you tried their soups yet?
