I know that these little critters are also part of nature, but when someone starts eating plants grown with love by you, it sucks. I recently wrote that we bought a few plants in our appartment. There was also basil among them, my very favorite ingredient in cooking. It was absolutely great, until aphids appeared on the leaves. Theoretically, I could simply spray it with some plant spray against them, but we bought it as an organic plant, so it came to me as a very strange idea. Therefore I started looking for some solution online and I tried many things, but unfortunately my basil didn't survive.

So finally, we made one of our planned trips ( I have 37 more trips in my tourist guide ). Although in Munich the weather was nice and sunny, 40 minutes southern by our car led to mountains covered by clouds. But it didn't discouraged us and we set off on the path leading us around the lake Schliersee. See more pictures here.

Muffins are those cakes, perfect for guests, which are very tasty, look great and it's very easy to bake them. I have two simple recipes that work great for me.  One is from my English friend Kate and the other one is from one book about muffins I bought in England. I use one of them when I have some frozen berries and the second one for sweet fresh fruit or dried fruit. In the second recipe, I once replace all the fruit (fresh and dried) with sweet chopped pears and it was fabulous.

Last weekend, on the occasion of the nice weather and a meeting with our parents after Christmas, we went on a small trip. It was pretty much only a nice walking within afternoon rest, but in the warm weather it was quite weary and I think more people from our group appreciated that the road back led through the forest. From Cerová we went on the winding road up the hill into a neighbouring village Rozbehy. In a local pub we drew our strength and finished our climb to top of the view-tower .