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I found this in my in-box today as the Word of The Day:
olla podrida \ol-uh-puh-DREE-duh; oy-uh-\, noun;
plural olla podridas /-DREE-duhz/ or ollas podridas:
1. A stew of highly seasoned meat and vegetables.
2. A mixture; a hodgepodge.
This complex, Byzantine, at times long-winded work, which spent more than 60 weeks on Spain's best sellers list, throws together mystery, romance, and crime into one big mix like an olla podrida.
-- Lawrence Olszewski, review of The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Library Journal, February 1, 2004
I'd never heard this word before, but it did accurately describe The Shadow of the Wind, a book which I very much enjoyed reading.
BTW olla podrida, if translated literally, means rotten pot.