This and that

Help!!! This is doing my head in. I won't be able to sleep thinking of who Fiona is who thanked me for linking to her blog.

I didn't have the luxury of sitting here typing on my keyboard yesterday and this morning as well. Was out of the house by 8.30am yesterday and not home till 7.30pm. Gosh, an entire day out, starting with doc's appt then had lunch at Holland V with mum and princess. Mum had kindly helped pick her up from school and collected me from doc's, so since we were in the vicinity, decided to visit Holland V for Ipoh hor fun (it's like a kind of glass noodles). Truth be told, I didn't think too much of the dumpling hor fun that I had. The hor fun part was nice, but the dumpling which are supposed to be prawn dumplings, did not seem to have any in it, or maybe they had minced them up. What I like are those prawn dumplings where you get big juicy chunks of prawns. I think you can get pretty good ones in the food courts, at the Hong Kong noodles stalls.

This particular Ipoh hor fun stall used to be in an old coffee shop and was often overflowing with people. It was the only food place I'd visit when I went Holland V which wasn't very often as it's pretty far from where I live and the bus journey takes too long. However, in recent years (I don't know when as it's been a very long time since I last went there), they had a major renovation done, and it's a beautiful modern establishment now. Even the crockery is very modern. A bit more upmarket-looking as compared to the coffee shop of old. I only managed to sneak a shot of my food (without flash) as was rather embarrassed to take pics because it was pretty crowded at lunch time. Princess had a bowl of plain chicken rice (no chicken) and prawn dumplings soup. I wasn't sure she'd eat it as grandma had given her a big muffin on the way to pick me up. I also discovered there were peas in the dumpling, which was weird as I never knew they put peas in dumplings, so she refused to eat them (yes, she does refuse certain food, contrary to what some of my mum friends must be thinking - that she eats everything).

While waiting for our food to be served, I spied a bakery across the road and said we must go there afterwards. I'm sure there was an article about it recently in the papers.

A cute bakery with little tables inside and out, a bit of a country-like decor and the name being 'Provence', I expected it to be French. However, everything inside was very Japanese-like. On the door was a sign that said 'Wassants sold out'. I would take that to be the most popular item in the shop? I have no idea as to what this wassant could be as there were none on display. Maybe next time I'll have more luck. There were crowds of people in there and I chose 3 items to try. Ok, one of them I know is Cream Cheese with Blueberry, the other 2 were some chocolate things (sorry am not good with the details such as names, will make more of an effort next time). I had the cream cheese with blueberry last night and am pleased to say it was simply delicious. It takes me to my childhood days when my dad would take us to Kuala Lumpur, or rather to Petaling Jaya, and we'd be treated to these lovely cream cheese buns from a certain bakery there. It was what we really looked forward to on those trips. The cream cheese had the perfect balance of sweetness and a tiny hint of sourness and it went so well with the soft plain bun. Yummy. We don't know the name of the bakery as we were very young then but my sis and I remember the taste of those buns till this day. And yesterday I had the privilege of coming across this particular bun that takes me back to those days. Will get for sis when she comes back. I don't have a photo of bun as it was rather out of shape by the time I came home with them in the evening. But here's one of the chocolate horn thingy.

I am sad to say, I'll be closing my baking section of the kitchen for a while. I was in total bliss the past couple of months as I could bake without any worries, but from the moment princess screamed and said, 'mummy there are 4 insects on the floor' when she was putting on her shoes for school yesterday morning, I knew my baking days had come to an end. I can't have a single ant in my house and I get super stressed and very affected in my bid to get rid of them. My friends would know as they have heard me complain each time these buggers visit. Unfortunately this new lot are not the slow-moving ones but super fast speedy gonzales kind which is so difficult to catch. I have a secret weapon against them but even then, they run too fast and often skip past the poisonous stuff. Sigh. Because I was out the whole of yesterday, I didn't have a chance to tackle them. So the minute I stepped into the home last evening, I got busy vacuuming, cleaning and washing stuff. I'm super paranoid and I can't take the risk of them finding their way into the bedrooms, as we sleep on a platform bed so it's as good as sleeping on the floor. I can't sleep knowing that they are around as I have images of them crawling over my head and into my ears etc.

Hubby has agreed to a part-time help this week (thanks hubby) and I tried to arrange for her to come in today but she couldn't so will have to wait till Friday to get the house cleaned inside out.

Also, thankfully managed to get dad to take princess out to a movie this afternoon - Hairspray, since he was going to watch it so I told him to take her along. At least to get her out of the house so she won't be obsessed by them little buggers.