Our food and gardening expert shares four new food and gardening books to help you kick off the year with some healthy habits.

Challenge: Eat breakfast every day.

Breakfast Bowls by Caroline Griffiths

The good news is that this is not a book filled with 52 different varieties of muesli, but rather it’s a shake-it-all-up type of cookbook. It allows you to dream big in the wee hours of the morning – and that has to be a great way to start the year. Think rice with fruit, kale with grains, avocados with nuts and more combinations than you could possibly dream of for the most important meal of the day, creating a wonderful kaleidoscope of flavours and colours to inspire your day.

Challenge: Pack your own lunches.

Love Your Lunch by Sean Wainer

This book is a very simple means to feeling good about your wallet and your health. Here are 60 recipes, including many vegetarian options, that will immediately make you the envy of your workmates. Sean Wainer, who brings together such treats as fish cakes, carrot cake, burritos, salads and sandwiches and even an Aussie meat pie, is the owner of Small World, an Amsterdam café that has a global reputation. Each recipe is designed to fit into your lunchbox, be heated at work and knock your socks off at lunch time. Going back to work is hard – let’s make it easy.

Challenge: Eat healthier treats.

Pana Chocolate, The Recipes by Pana Barbounis

Here at Readings, we love a local business that brings joy to one and all. Richmond’s Pana Chocolate is one such shop, and it gives by creating treats that are delicious, good-looking, and just so happen to be free of dairy, gluten, soy, and refined sugar. Pana Chocolate, The Recipes is the inspiration for making little bundles of gratification in your own home. The collection includes over 70 recipes that cover options for sweetness at every meal: from breakfast (think chia pudding) to your kid’s inner urban birthday party (chocolate crackles), to beautifully presented traditional desserts that are actually raw! This book is one that will fill you with delight without the guilt of additives.

Challenge: Live off the land.

Backyard Chickens by Dave Ingham

The best means to a bountiful garden plot is making sure you have fertilised that dirt, and the very best fertiliser is chicken poop. This is only one reason to join the trend and home a couple of chickens in your backyard. Not only for rural dwellers with big yards or indeed inner-city try-hards, chicken keeping is for everyone, all year round. Ingham offers advice on how to house and feed chickens, how to settle chickens with other pets, and shows you the minimal commitment needed to keep your chickens content. This is my book of the month.

Chris Gordon