SOUNDING OFF:

If you eat, you’re probably aware that the price of food is rising. Even if you live by that venerable motto, “You can’t be too rich or too thin,” you need to be aware that the energy crisis and the food crisis are intertwined.

Food requires energy to grow, process, transport and market.

Bio-fuels, “making gas out of corn or whatever,” are increasing in popularity, even if it often takes more energy to produce them than its worth. But don’t worry. There’s a new bio-fuel about to change the world, maybe even save the world.

Matzoh.

Fortunately, the Middle East is planning to turn over tens of thousands of additional acres and hectares to farming the delicate matzoh plant.

Therefore, unlike corn, there will not be a nasty shortage. In the interim if you want to get rich, buy matzoh futures. And if you want to stay thin, eat matzoh.

My story begins three years ago in, of all places, Israel. Professor Yossi S. B. Falafel, Ph.D., a world-renowned archeo-botanist specializing in edible fossils, was gearing up for a trip into the desert, in search of fossilized matzohs from the time of the Exodus.

His wife, Sarah, an American-born gastronomic engineer considered all matzohs to taste dry like fossils so she generously covered them with her delicious homemade chopped-liver-and-marmalade pâté. Sarah was preparing their picnic lunch and dutifully included a box of Mordecai Mossad’s Macrobiotic Plum-and-Garlic Matzohs for her husband’s drive-time snackery.

Two hours into the trip, she noticed the gas gauge.

“Shin Bet,” said Mrs. Falafel, calling him by his middle initials, which he never liked but which she considered endearing, “have you looked at the gas gauge?”

Yossi Shin Bet Falafel, eminent scientist, looked at the gas gauge in obedience to the Talmudic injunction. “When your wife tells you to look at the gas gauge, look at the gas gauge.”

“Running on empty,” he observed.

“Indeed,” his wife replied. “Your insistence on filling the tank only with kosher high-test, rarely available even in Israel, has brought us to this. We don’t even have enough gas to wander 40 minutes in the desert. What shall we do?”

Never at a loss for ideas, Falafel replied, “Have you a bottle of wine?”

“I do indeed,” said Sarah, producing a magnum of her favorite, Heavenly Haifa, 2004, made from grapes originally donated by the Rothschilds over a century before (Sadly, a century’s worth of immersion in Middle Eastern soil and climate did not improve French grapes, thus giving rise to the oenological quip that the Israelis turned wine into water).

“Pour it into the tank,” spoke Sarah.

“On second thought maybe we shouldn’t,” replied Shin Bet. Middle Eastern soil and climate produces a wine with the alcoholic content of, well, matzohs.” Then he brightened considerably. “But perhaps we could use matzohs as fuel.”

And so it came to pass that the Falafels mixed matzohs and wine into a smooth, seductive liquid, and poured it into the gas tank. In a miracle of miracles they got eight times the usual mileage per gallon! This, with an engine that could have been arrested for a DUI were it a transgression for a car to get drunk (Heavenly Haifa packs rather a wallop).

Upon his return to his laboratory at the Tel Aviv Institute of Applied Jocularity, Falafel began to experiment. He ultimately discovered chicken soup with matzoh balls worked just as well as the dry matzohs mixed with wine, and immediately turned his data over to the Army.

They added some schmaltz, purple horseradish, cabbage as a catalyst, and tried it in their Merkava (Hebrew for chariot) tank, which started getting double and sometimes triple its previous mileage. The aroma also produced healthier soldiers free of coughs, colds, influenza and with an increased sense of well being.

The Army passed its findings on to Merkava Motors, who in less than a year adapted their tank into a sport utility vehicle the Chutzpah 520, to be marketed in the United States starting next year.

Sales prospects are excellent. After all, the cannon makes a great turn signal and, what with all that heavy armor and treads, getting into tight parking spaces is no problem even if it means munching a few cars.

I may get one myself to survive driving in Newport-Mesa intersections and shopping malls.

In the meantime, best wishes for a happy Passover, and hoping that you had a joyous uplifting Easter season and Holy Week.

MICHAEL ARNOLD GLUECK, M.D., Newport Beach, is a regular contributor on April Fool’s Day.