In the world of calories, not everything is equal. A particular offender is oil: based on the label, 100g of the olive oil I normally use accounts for 900 calories. I would not normally use anything like that amount but even a couple of teaspoons full (10g) would account for 90 calories, which is as much as an average sized egg.

I wanted a decent breakfast this morning but since I appear to have put on a couple of pounds while camping at Soul Survivor (doubtless due to snacking on various high sugar, high fat, high carb foods) I wanted to keep the calorie count low. I decided to try my Crunchy Eggs recipe but dry-fried (ie. without any oil). Normally I would add a glug to cook the breadcrumbs and another glug before dropping in the eggs. That could be 30ml or so of oil, or about 300 calories just on that ingredient. My calculations suggest that my dry version was about 260 calories, so less than half just by leaving out the oil! It was not quite as rich tasting as the oily version but, with the richness of the egg yolk, still enough to be a tasty breakfast.

My other trick was to bump up the flavour. As well as some salt and pepper, I added fennel seeds to the mix. This was inspired by my visit to the Oxford Blue last night for dinner. The portion sizes were not overly large but strongly flavoured and quite ample. That is going to be my cooking goal for the next few weeks; more flavour with smaller portions, less oil and hopefully a few less pounds to show for it.