With yom tov fast approaching, it’s time to think about getting your wife something nice. Such as a carton of eggs.

Well, it’s either something nice or eggs. You can’t have both. You’re going to make me decide between eggs and matzah?

So we need to figure out what we’re going to do. Last Pesach, according to my notes, my family ate 20 dozen eggs. In one week. Don’t tell my doctor.

And I don’t know about you, but I haven’t heard any of our so-called pro-Jewish politicians address this. What are we going to do about Pesach?

Wait. What are the non-Jews going to do about their egg holiday? Don’t they hide eggs?

Though to be honest, their holiday is easy, because they could just not hide as many eggs as they say they did. Also, I think they’re yotzei with plastic eggs. Whereas I don’t think we can put one of those on the Seder plate with a little prize inside. (“Surprise! It’s your afikoman gift! It’s a sticky hand!” “Great! Now I can grab matzah from across the table!”)

Also, I see no reason they can’t paint potatoes. Except that then we’ll have a potato shortage, C”V.

So we need some ideas. Of course, the way my articles work (knowing my luck), by the time this article runs, the egg prices will already be coming down. But I mean everything else is pretty expensive too, so some egg-stretching tips might still come in handy.

Obviously, the first idea that comes to anyone’s mind is to get our own chickens.

I have chickens, for example. And the main thing you have to worry about with your own chickens, as far as chicken flu, is people asking you, “Aren’t you worried about chicken flu?”

But they don’t just manifest chicken flu. They have to catch it from someone.

My chickens only see each other. I’m not bringing them to a chicken kindergarten every day to interact with other chickens and bring home diseases.

Though I don’t think I understand this whole situation in the first place. The chickens have the flu. Great. So we kill them? Why don’t we have them quarantined? Wear masks? Wipe down their groceries? Why are we killing them so they don’t die on their own? Why not let all of them catch this flu and then build herd immunity? The ones that survive can be immune to it!

How is this not fixable? Why don’t we just try some of the classic flu remedies? Tylenol, decongestant, plenty of fluids, maybe some chicken soup…. Okay, maybe not that. Is that why we can’t fix bird flu? Because we can’t give them chicken soup? How are they getting the flu at all? They’re made of chicken soup! What if we just fed them water and some carrots and left them out in the sun?

So that’s what I do.

So I would definitely say to get chickens. Except that most places that sell chickens only sell babies, so you had to have done this about six months ago. No one’s selling you an adult chicken. Why would they? They can make way more on eggs. If you want adults, you’d be better off hunting down pigeons.

Though that’s an idea! How about you do a crazy amount of shiluach hakan over the next few weeks? I don’t know when you might have time to come across that many nests, but maybe that can be your project on Chol Hamoed.

Another idea is that maybe we can stretch our eggs, like it’s the 1930s. Like who says we should just fluff up our egg whites for cakes? Why not do it before we make omelets? Or potato kugel?

(“Boy, this is the fluffiest yapchik I’ve ever had!”)

Or maybe we can stretch our eggs with other ingredients. We sometimes use eggs to stretch other foods, like chopped liver, but there’s no reason it can’t work both ways. Don’t have enough eggs? Add liver!

Or we can just try leaving the eggs out of some recipes. Like what do vegans do on Pesach? We should find out. This could be why Hashem made vegans. And has them constantly advertising who they are. No one is secretly a vegan. So let’s ask them, if we’re still talking to them.

So I looked it up. And it turns out there are numerous options. Though most of the options I saw are either kitniyos or milchig.

(I’m not sure how the vegans are eating the milchig alternatives either.)

But for example, one alternative I found was to use mashed banana. Like if you’re making a Pesach banana cake, you use bananas in place of eggs, and then some more bananas for bananas! But I’m not sure your potato kugel is going to be amazing. Or your chicken cutlets.

“Would you like some chopped bananas and onions?”

“No, I already fell for that once, with the avocado salad!”

Also, if you buy 20 dozen bananas before Pesach, you’re going to end up being the people from the math problems. I also don’t think you need to eat that much banana in a week that you’re also eating matzah.

o Apparently, you can also replace an egg with two tablespoons of potato starch and three tablespoons of water. So like if you’re making Pesach lukshen, which is eggs and potato starch, instead you can just use potato starch and potato starch! (“Why is the soup so thick?”)

But these substitutions don’t work for everything. For example, we can’t just put some kind of egg substitute mush on the Seder plate. Even if we put it inside a plastic egg.

“This is to remember the chagigah!”

“Was the chagigah slimy?”

Perhaps we can buy one real egg—a really really nice one—and put it on the Seder plate. You go to the store and inspect it like you would an esrog. And then Rebbes can have a big rebbishe egg, like from a turkey or a goose or something,.and a giant zeroa. Though the stores would then charge hundreds of dollars for a Seder plate egg, and so we’d be back where we started.

Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia and other magazines. He has also published eight books and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at MSchmutter@gmail.com.