I am in the Dade County, Miami Beach library and I only have 12 minutes so this is going to be Really Fast.

Miami trips me out. It is flat and there is a lot of traffic and there is quite a bit of money flashing going on. I know there are some bad, bad areas not to go into but I didn’t go into them, not even when I was lost, so I don’t know what up down there. Had a bit of a tripper this morning at my hotel – last night when I checked in I saw immediately that I was overlooking a ginormous construction site. So I went back down and I was like, is that construction going to be loud? Because if so, please move me. But the guy told me they rarely work, or if they do not until 9 or 10 o’clock. Whateves, it’s a Latin kind of a place, maybe this is the case.

But no, at 7 AM the construction is going and it is LOUD. I mean, they are building a freekin skyscaper. You get the idea. So I go downstairs and after a bit of time I get the guy to move me. Which is all fine and great, except that both keys – for my old room and my new room – work on my new room. In other words, I can get into either room with either key. Umm. That is weird. At least I have a deadbolt.

Seven minutes so I just have to touch on Top Chef for a minute. I got in last night about eight and lo and fucking behold they have Bravo on my TV! I was all bummed because I was going to miss it, and then I didn’t have to. As for the outcome of last night, well, I am not sure what to think there.

Mike and his Snickers Cheeto thing – what is up with that guy? I mean, that was really, really lame. Shit, if all you have to do is puree a Snickers bar and stick a Cheeto into it, then I could be on Top Chef. Also, if I hear “I miss my wife” one more time…

I wasn’t too happy with the outcome of the whole thing – the “no one is going home” thing. So, because Sam and Betty are both favorites, they decide not to send one of them home? That is lame. I like Sam and all but he clearly should have been the one to leave since he was the leader of the lamest team. As for Betty – I am not so sure I believe all her wide-eyed innocence. But who knows what goes on behind the scenes.

If Mike had messed up or Marcel had cheated, you can bet they would have been booted. Weird stuff.

OK… that was the fastest entry I ever wrote and now I gotta gooooooo…..

I am tired but it is done:

Thank the fucking gods. Yo, all you who want to a) write about food or b) think it’s really fun or c) think you’ll make a lot of money or d) would like to self publish a book. I’ve got news for you: it is hard, it is time consuming, it is expensive, and also, it takes all the fun out of life. There. I said it.

Anyhow, it is done, and in the end, if it helps even twenty people to find some great food, killer wine bars, and awesome times in Venice, then, well, it is all worth it (I guess.) In a nutshell, my version of a Jeff Spicoli-esque plug.

In other news. Due to exhaustion, I haven’t been feeling up to much. It’s funny though, because I have a feeling that all I have really been missing is my on and off infatuation with Britt Daniel. Sometimes I forget about him now, and this is totally horrifying to me. I think it is these moments (the non-Britt ones) that I am at my most bored and lethargic. Not even Top Chef can rile me up at these times, and that is sad.

But in the end, I still love, love, love Britt Daniel. You know those ads on TV for that movie Stranger than Fiction with Emma Thompson and Will Farrell? That music – that killer song – on that ad is SPOON.

Yes. They are on the verge of superstardom… they are almost as big as Wilco… and soon there will be a million Britt loving wanabees… and I will go to Spoon shows and will have to squish and shove and say, GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY, I WAS HERE FIRST. BIYATCH.

Whatever. I’ll never grow up. In the meantime, for my listening pleasure, and yours if you want it, is a New Tune from Spoon.

Yep. It’s not the Beast and Dragon Adored… not yet… but it is awesome, and the best possible cure for this tired girl.

One of the most hilarious videos ever made by one of the greatest American bands ever, Yo La Tengo.

Happy Weekend to you all.

Is it just me or, is the new season of Top Chef kind of BORING? They are trying hard to create a lot of drama, but it’s a bit of a yawn, really. No wonder Marisa had to pose practically nude with that gas torch. She has to keep the memory of herself alive somehow, since even the show itself is having a hard time doing it, after just three episodes, one of which she was the villain.

Ok, so it’s not totally boring. It’s just Missing Something. Like someone snorting coke in the walk-in or some male-on-male flirting action a la Harold and Stephen in early season one. I miss Dave’s facial twitch. Betty’s wholesome, wide-eyed girly vehemance is starting to really get on my nerves.

Emily choked hard tonight and was given the big fat boot because of too much salt and too little mascara. In a room full of borings, she was ugly AND boring, and also said she hated kids and said some lady who didn’t like her “calming” chocolate ice cream had a fat ass. We all knew she’d be the one to go. Frank will be around for at least two more showdowns due to mere camp value (what the fuck was that on his plate? It was kind of awesome in it’s awfulness) and Michael will be around just so he can really start to cry instead of just being on the verge all the time.

I still love Sam though I have to say, he is also boring and his hair is freakin wacky. I am in the minority though, because here is what is going on hits-wise on my blog stats:

People are very curious about Ilan. He is far and away the number one dude as far as people looking for info go.

Running a not-so-close second is Elia. Suyai is third even though she was off in the first episode.

Marisa, Frank, Marcel and Otto are all somewhere in the middle. Kind of weird, I would have thought Marisa would be getting more attention due to the fact that she is ho-ing herself and is also, kind of an asshole. Josie is right below them.

At the very bottom are Mia, Cliff, Betty, Carlos, Sam and Mike, Poptarticus-Stats wise. But for Sam and Michael this is partly due to the fact that I mispelled their names initally. Who knows though, how all this stat stuff really works. Also, it’s very possible that Ilan is googling himself every five minutes.

Fish tacos? Boring. Bacon ice cream? Not even weird enough not to be boring. Why am I so bored? Bring on the eye-gropage. Something must be done.

I drive a lot. Sometimes for hours, days, sometimes for weeks. Sometimes I spend more time in my car than I do in my apartment.

Thankfully, I have a lot of CDs and a 6 CD changer. Before you freak out, let me assure you – there are benefits to the old way, of That Time Before the IPod. You know what? IPods are lame when it comes to Driving Music. Long hours of driving require one thing: listening to the same six records over and over. Maybe even the same record, over and over. Maybe, even, the same SONG over and over.

There are certain things that sound better in the car. Somehow the sound of cracking a beer open sounds better in a car, to me, even though I don’t drink beer. Maybe it’s a recollected memory thing. Like that memory of being in a car, like a 1970 Nova or what have you, but in like 1982, and the sun is going down and leaving crystals on the windshield (or maybe, it is foggy) and there is that sound of metal hitting metal and that tiny hiss of the can opening. It’s a kind of music. Driving music.

But getting back to music. For some reason, I love Sonic Youth in my car better than at home. I could listen to Rather Ripped over and over in my car, but at home it bores me. Sonic Youth is so awesome in the car. The perfect Driving Music.

I’ve been wanting to elaborate on the whole driving music thing for some time. And I will, eventually, with greater detail. In the meantime, I could not stop listening, driving from San Diego to Anaheim to Palm Springs and back, to PJ Harvey’s Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. For hours and hours I totally got into myself, and her, and the year 2000, all over again. I was in love, she was in love. My thing turned ugly, hers ended. But listening to her account of it brings it all back – what it was like to be in love – for a moment, or an hour. Or six hours, or a couple of days. However long the CD is in my changer.

Yeah. Still I came home and had to watch the video. Yo, people who ask why I’m not “with someone?” Because… if it is not like this, it is not worth it.

If it’s not like this, it’s not worth it.

He’s his uncle Tom’s nephew. A future rock star.

He’s also takes after me in some ways.

Damn. Is he awesome or what?

Well, I just wrote this whole long thing on the totally bizarre website of Marisa Churchill but then I deleted it. Google it. Go ahead, you know you want to. Her website I mean. It’s pretty wacky. I’m almost, like, at a loss for words.

I have one thing to say to the bloggers over at Amuse-Biatch (one of my new favorite blogs, by the way.) Did you not see that full-on eye-suckulation that Chef Ming peformed on Padma’s ass when she got up from the judges table? That was some serious eye-gropage. Wish I had a picture of that.

Anyhow. Tomorrow I am going to Disneyland and Saturday I am going to party in Palm Springs so hopefully I will forget about all this sordidness for a little while. Whenever I start to get that crazy image in my head I’m going to think, “and now, MINNIE MOUSE” in my best Strip Club voice.

So I almost couldn’t bring myself to post this because it is just too weird.

Last night, or this morning… sometime in that other reality, anyway, I had this insanely crazy thing happen in one of my dreams. It wasn’t weird like flying over pits of a purple substance that looked like melted PopRocks or weird like making out with Vanessa Redgrave or other types of bizarre randomness. It was even weirder – I was holding a bean and cheese burrito, and it farted. TWICE.

At the risk of becoming known as the blogger who once confessed she dreamed about a farting burrito, I am not sure I can let this one pass without asking for some outsider tips about what the fuck this all means. Not only did the burrito fart twice, but before it farted, it sort of stiffened up in a pre-fart pose. It was an Animistic Burrito. A farting burrito with a SOUL. How else can I explain it? There is no possible way. I don’t think.

Right before I went to bed I was reading this book I got at a garage sale yesterday for fifty cents, called The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Reincarnation. My favorite line so far? “And now this Complete Idiot’s Guide gives reincarnation another boost of respectability.” Um, OK.

So was my dream somehow connected to reincarnation? Or maybe the burrito symbolizes a penis? A farting penis? Or maybe, this is just a subtle move on my brain’s part to tell me to lay off the bean burritos. I don’t know.

In other news, I made the most kick-ass homemade ravioli this weekend, with pumpkin, crushed amaretti and Riesling. And I also made two ice creams – a chocolate one laced with grappa and a creamy custardy one with an acorn liqueur I bought in Spain. I think I might have a future in ice cream – Shannon’s Super Sexy Ice Creams. No kids can have it though.

This is why.

Also, Pimientos de Padron. And, Albarino. More later, have a great weekend.

I woke up at 3:30 A.M. and couldn’t get back to sleep. Jet lag sucks. Finally I decided to get up and look at my pictures. Then I started to get hungry, so I decided to post all my food pictures. So. Here are just a few of the items I ate in Spain.

The famous Pimientos de Padron, my new favorite food. Only we can’t get them here. The peppers look like jalapenos, but they are not hot, except once in a while you get a hot one, so it’s like playing Russian Roulette in your mouth. They fry these quickly in olive oil and then sprinkle them rather liberally with coarse salt. These peppers are on almost every menu in the northwest, but we sadly couldn’t find them anywhere else. Actually we did see them on a menu board in Sevilla on our last day, but the menu board did not seem to belong to anyone. It was just sitting in the street, driving us crazy.

If Brian had these at The OB Vine I would eat them every single day. I am serious. WAIT! They ARE grown here in California. BRIAN! If you start making these I will come in every day instead of only five days a week. Check it out. Shannon’s Favorite Vegetable in the World.

Our favorite tapas bar of the whole trip – O Bispo in Santiago de Compostela. We ate there something like twenty times in four days.

This is not a food picture, but a picture of a bar called O Cortello in Pontevedra. It was one of the craziest, weirdest bars I have ever been in, and we had incredible fried calamari there two nights in a row. This place is not for the squeamish. It is dirty, there is a dog in the kitchen, and there are some pretty strange goings-on. I loved it in there.

We always ordered coffee in our room when that service was possible, but one time Mom accidentally ordered a complete breakfast (to the tune of about thirty-five bucks.) This is what we got. Check out the pile of bread-type items. Thankfully we had plenty of zip-lock baggies and we were eating muffins from this breakfast for weeks. Also, I caught a slight cold around that time, so we figure St. James was responsible for the slip-up, so that I would drink some orange juice. St. James was always looking after us after I hugged his statue, I think.

Mmm… a bottle of Ribeira del Duero, looking at a castle keep, in our room in Vilalba. Later I ate the freshest piece of fish I have ever had in my life, but I forgot to take a picture of it.

A fat plate of Cabrales cheese (zip-lock bag came in handy here as well) and chorizo cooked in hard cider, at the Parador in Cangas de Onis near the Picos de Europas mountains.

Probably our favorite meal of the trip and we had the same thing two nights in a row – room service in our fantastic room in Cervera de Pisuerga. Potatoes, tomatoes and peppers baked in a clay pot, a steak sandwich, wine, and German MTV. I was in heaven.

The breakfast room at the Parador in Cervera. Please take note of the bottle of Syrah for the people who like a little strong red wine with their cereal.

On night, on a whim, I decided to order a room service meal of many bottles of wine and some different baby foods. Just kidding. This was a display of possibilities though, of which Spain has many.

Spanish stews kick ass. This one is potatoes and chorizo, and I ate it in the Rioja with a fine bottle, of, uh, Rioja.

Just so you don’t get the idea that eating is Spain is perfect, voila, a misfire in Bilbao. The wine was off and the chorizo squirted me when we finally had the balls to ask the bartender for a fork. The two old dudes drinking big-gulp sized brandies and singing tunes from the pre-Franco days were kind of humorous though. Someday I want to go back to Bilbao and go to all the bars there, which could take a couple of years, even if you visited a few a day.

Then we got to the south, where Clive and Sue fed us lots of healty food which at that point we surely needed. Clive, now known as Man of La Plancha, cooked up all these vegetables for us the first night on his grill. They grow all their own vegetables, watched over, at the moment, by Guard Bunny.

Another delicious dinner from the creative minds of Clive and Sue. Pork kebabs, rice, mushrooms and lots of wine sure tasted good after a day of spelunking and uber hiking.

Red peppers stuffed with a seafood mixture and topped with two cream sauces (carrot and asparagus? I think.) A lovely presentation and a tasty dish, in a quiet restaurant in El Bosque. There was a little boy in there that was kind of tripping on my hair though. He came around and stood by the wall near me for a while, to try to figure out how purple was possible.

After I had to say goodbye to the Czech architects from the Sherry tasting, I decided to go for some Spanish boys instead. Just kidding, this is just a picture of a picture, silly.