Down South...Day Thirty-Seven...Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Today...I'm on a "mission". I've heard several people mention that a place called "Wright's Gourmet Deli" has fantastic cakes...Carrot and Red Velvet to be more specific. So...I'm on my way there this morning.
But first, I'm stopping for lunch at one of my favorite restaurants in the world...The Columbia in Ybor City. I first ate there as a child...six or seven years old maybe. And the great thing about it is that it is essentially unchanged from my first visit. Walking through their front door is like stepping back in time. The menu is Cuban/Spanish and everything, and I mean everything, is good...no, great.
I slid onto a bar stool and order a mango daiquiri...excellent. Then for lunch, their famous "1905 Salad" (a frequent dish at the last several Summer Picnics) and a Cuban Sandwich. The salad is legendary...lettuce, green olives, sliced Swiss cheese and ham with a dressing made from lime juice, garlic, EV olive oil and oregano...it is easily worthy of it's "legendary" status. And the Cuban Sandwich...ah, perfect...crusty Cuban bread, thin-sliced ham, cheese and pickle...with a little roast pork thrown in...one of the great sandwiches of the world.
Then...it's on to Wright's for cake(s). For dessert, I have a piece of Coconut Cake and a cup of coffee...the piece of cake is enormous...I can barely finish it. I can't decide between Carrot Cake and Red Velvet Cake...so I get one of each. I'll have enough for dessert tonight and plenty more to leave with Ed and Molly, take with to my cousin's...and probably more still to take down to Mark and Faith in the Keys.
After dessert, I head back to the Barnes & Noble to work on emails, bills, blog entries, etc.
Dinner tonight is pretty simple...Ed's bean soup and some of Molly's cornbread...along with a few glasses of Quinta do Crasto, a Portuguese red from the Douro region.
And, of course, more football! Tonight it's Iowa v. Georgia Tech. Iowa fans are a nice lot (as opposed to, say, OSU or MSU fans), so I'm definitely rooting for Iowa, the underdog. The Hawkeyes play a great disciplined game and win 24-14. By the time the game ends, it's almost midnight...time for bed.