  We present a new chiral power expansion scheme for the nuclear equation of
state. The scheme is effective in the sense that it is constructed to work
around nuclear saturation density. The leading and subleading terms are
evaluated and are shown to provide an excellent equation of state. As a further
application we considered the chiral quark condensate in nuclear matter.
Already at nuclear saturation density we predict a substantially smaller
reduction of the condensate as compared to conventional approaches.
