SOME people say that life's too short to make bread, but in Bread Matters by Andrew Whitley, the argument is that "British bread is a nutritional, culinary, social and environmental mess", and by a crumb of implication partly responsible for life being too short (Fourth Estate £20). So do the calculation, but bear in mind that slow bread is the biz.

Whitley, baker of many decades, takes a sharp scientific slice at allergy, enzymes and salt, and gives the farm and the industry a toasting. Take your time with the baking, and with the reading; it's not until you reach page 100 that you start to make loaves.

Try this at home, from Mexican Cantina Cooking by Jean-Pierre Vincken. It's tortilla flour. Boil the maize kernels in powdered lime to remove the tough skins, grind the washed kernels, make a moist dough, dry this and then grind to a fine powder so that you can then mix with water for tortillas, one of the classic outdoor foods (Apple £12.99). If you can arrange spicy chicken in a banana leaf, there'll be no flies on you, and here's a tip; put a slice of lemon in the neck of the beer bottle and it supposed to keep insects out.

The word "connoisseur" in a book title is normal cause for concern, but a batch of three such - The Connoisseur's Guide to Cheese by Judy Ridgway, ... to Tea by Jane Pettigrew and... to Coffee by Jon Thorn, make for a tasty trio (Apple £12.99 each).

The stingy will be relived that good-quality tea will make a second pot with the addition of more hot water. The argumentative will be pleased to know that adding the milk first minimises the scalding of its fat, but that this controversial sequence probably started out to protect fine porcelain bowls from hot tea.

Coffee drinkers will be delighted with the technology that can be involved in making their brew and will know what beans to look for next time they are in East Timor or the Galapagos.

The cheeses are a super selection including the Swiss name-controlled Sbrinz - an extra hard version of Gruyère, or Emmental matured for twice as long. It's sad to read that there is no farmhouse Stilton sold these days. Wensleydale cheese has fared better, has had a "chequered history in recent years", but has been rescued by a few farms and the small creamery at Hawes.

In Feast by Martin Jones (Oxford University Press £20), the professor tells how he and his fellow bio-archaeologists delve into the hostile enigmatic landscapes of the distant past and calculate with lasers the comfort factor of a prehistoric hearth.

They add up the "balance sheets of calories", explain the pre-digestion advantage of cooking, savour the essences of conviviality and sample the ancient DNA.

The story tells us "why humans share food" and takes us back to times when eye contact, an open mouth or bared teeth signified danger. Far from complaining about the demise of the family meal, he thinks we have exciting modern lives that incorporate many and diverse social campfires, some with virtual hearths.

A photograph shows a bio-archaeologist on the New York Fresh Kills Landfill that's perhaps mankind's largest-ever creation. Drilling a hole into the rubbish brings up mostly text, described as the "type fossil" of the modern landfill. They even read a warm newspaper from 1954 with a story on the Bikini Atoll nuclear test.

Prof Jones chews on the post-Palaeolithic diet, the eating of grass seeds, rice, maize and wheat instead of mostly meat, and includes a sideways suggestion that all those carbs was a "wrong turn in human history".