The Pantry Post: On Easter Egg Hunts & Broken Bunnies
8th April, 2026
She arrived late, just as we were packing down the last pre-Easter pantry party, but she came with purpose.
This grandma was already on the hunt for eggs.
Not for herself. For the grandkids waiting back at her small public housing flat. School holidays in play. Parents juggling custody, casual work, and the quiet strain of a cost-of-living crunch. And there she was, holding it all together. Doing that sacred, invisible work of keeping a family stitched into something that still feels like family.
We gathered what we could still find. Milk. Bread. Beans. A bit of frozen protein we’d been saving for a tougher day.
But her question cut through it all:
“Do you have any Easter eggs?”
All we had left were some broken chocolate bunnies. Saved only due to the double down ask at Secondbite, who were somewhat embarrassed to offer them up so smashed.
With rising prices, shrinkflation, and all the noise about shortages and supply chains, Easter chocolate has become a bit of a luxury item. Smaller eggs, higher prices, and a growing gap between what’s on the shelf and what people can actually afford. For Grandmas generation the Easter economy, fuelled by the chocolate industrial complex sure ain’t what it used to be.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-28/easter-eggs-chocolate-prices-cocoa-costs-explained/103640000
Grandma laughed and said it might be less of an Easter egg hunt and more like a “zombie bunny apocalypse” in the construction zone that currently doubles as their backyard. The Flemington towers which are so often in the headlines for difficult reasons are mid-demolition, mid-rebuild, mid-everything.
But the kids?
“They’ll love it,” she said.
And you could believe her.
Because the thing we keep learning at the pantry is,
Celebrations don’t need to be perfect to be real.They just need to be shared.
Working in food rescue means we live slightly out of sync with the calendar anyway. The Halloween holdovers haunt us in November; the Christmas food waste Epiphany hits us in January, well after the 12 days are complete. From mid-February we rescue unrequited Valentines treats and pass them on to those unlucky in love on the 14th. And Easter? It lingers, incubating like eggs waiting to hatch.
We remember imperfection at Easter as our multi-faith pantry was founded 15 years ago, inspired by the food sharing stories of Jesus/ Issa/ Yashua whose resurrected body returned wounded and hungry asking for food like a teenager at the fridge.
In those stories Resurrection is experienced by doubters in the process of Jesus sharing bread and baking brunch for fragmented family and friends that had hung him out to dry.
Far from perfect, but a celebration of sharing!
So if your Easter felt a little cracked, wounded or broken at a moment of apocalypse, disrupted by war or the threats of the end of civilisation and subsequent cost of living crisis…
Take heart in the quiet power of a grandma hiding broken bunnies in a building site, creating a moment of joy out of whatever she can gather.
That’s the kind of Easter beauty in brokenness we’re here for.
If you want to be part of food rescue and resourcing of hope moments like these, and to back everyday hero Grandmothers in our community—now’s a good time to step in.
Donate, volunteer, attend an event or spread the word via PeoplesPantry.org.au, You can become a regular donor and follow our socials @pplspantry
Because hope doesn’t arrive perfectly packaged.
Sometimes it looks like a broken bunny, resurrected and redeemed!
Peace, Salām, Shalom,
Rev. Marcus, Tim & The Pantry Crew
