  The chiral and $1/N_c$ expansions are combined in the description of low
energy baryons. The combination furnishes a better behaved expansion,
consequence of exactly eliminating large terms that violate the $1/N_c$
expansion and which are typical of formulations of BChPT where consistency with
the large $N_c$ limit is disregarded. The improvements are particularly
dramatic in the case of SU(3). The general framework is outlined and
applications to the vector charges and axial couplings are presented along with
a comparison with Lattice QCD results with three quark flavors.
