Number of Posts Per Category

Hey everyone, I have been searching for a way to get the number of posts for a particular category, but I can’t seem to figure out the database query to accomplish this. I am just using it to dynamically create a particular number of menu items depending on the number of posts. Something like:

numposts = $wpdb->get_var(“SELECT COUNT(*) FROM $wpdb->posts WHERE post_status = ‘publish’ AND category = ‘projects'”);

Can anyone help me out with this, it’s throwing me for a loop. Thanks,

JW