Two of my favorite things are homemade bread and homemade soup — especially when it is cold outside. I don't know how to make either, but luckily Panera Bread excels at both. They have five different soups, plus seasonal specialties, every day. Best of all, you can have the soup served in a warm-from-the-oven sourdough bread bowl. (Just the thought of it warms me up!)

One menu mainstay is Low Fat Chicken Noodle, which is perfect for a bread bowl. Once the inside of the bowl gets a little soggy from the soup, you can scoop it out like a little dumpling. On a recent visit, my 7-year-old son had his first-ever soup-in-a-bread-bowl experience. Watching him slurp out the soup while tearing apart the bowl was not pretty, but he absolutely loved it. "This is so good, I can't stop eating it," he said. "I could just eat this all day."