Walnuts are the New London Buses

A skim through my calorie counter book yielded a few surprises. Take for example walnuts, at 50 kcals for one large nut. Which means that a smallish grilled rump steak is just about equivalent to four of them. My wife is now cursing me, as walnuts have been a regular feature in her packed-lunch salads for years.

Four teaspoons of oil have the same calorific value as that steak/those nuts too. Weird.

The nice surprises (and the steak thing counts as one of those, let's look at and possibly through half full glasses) include water chestnuts and bamboo shoots, where a small can of each runs to a total of roughly 50 kcals (one walnut - now to calories what the London bus is to height, or the area of Wales to disappearing rainforests). And a generous portion of coleslaw made with light mayo is round about - yes, you guessed, a walnut of calories. I love coleslaw.

Mushrooms, another favourite, are deceptive. Just 13 kcals for 100g raw or boiled (I guess I've done that in stews, but never on their own), they shoot up to 157 when fried in oil.

Happily eggs are pretty austere on the calorie front, at about 80 when poached or boiled. Happily, as our four hens produce enough for cooking and for our breakfast every other day.

We refuse to use the dreaded D word and to go on one, so tonight's meal will be our usual Friday fare of steak for males and fish for the supreme leader. They will, however, be carefully cooked and served with super healthy stuff again: steamed French beans and mushrooms (done in a way yet to be decided, but microwave-steamed may work), steamed new spuds. With a salad to start our virtue will be assured. Then sod it, and glory be, a Magnum - it's the weekend, and the dear leader in particular deserves a treat - Magnum Classic being five walnuts of calories.