Food news antipasto

Want to experience something from Rene Redzepi’s NOMA but can’t afford to go to Copenhagen? You can try Noma Kaffe, a monthly subscription service that allows you to sample the coffee served at the award-winning restaurant. As you might expect, this service is not cheap: the cost is $65 USD per month for two 250-gram bags of coffee. Noma’s head of coffee, Carolyne Lane, told Food & Wine that “our objective with each drop is to kind of tell an interesting story. That might be a comparison of flavor. It might be a comparison of different varietals from the same farm or different processings of the same varietal.”

EYB Member favorite author Sabrina Ghayour released Persiana Easy earlier this month. It will be the featured book in the Eat Your Books Cookbook Club in November, but until then, you can tide yourself over with an author interview at The Independent. Ghayour talks about how tradition isn’t sacrosanct, and how she embraces shortcuts. Click here to enter our giveaway (US/CA) to win a copy of this book and check out Sabrina’s events.

Going hand-in-hand with our report last week on how Americans are losing faith in the security of their food system, this week we learned that the CDC is scaling back its foodborne illness surveillance program. Going forward, the CDC is only testing for the presence of salmonella and E. coli. In the past, the agency also tested for six other pathogens: campylobacter, cyclospora, listeria, shigella, vibrio and Yersinia. Some states are stepping up their own inspection systems, but this patchwork will not make up for the loss of nationwide coverage.

It’s back to school time for most of the US following the Labor Day holiday. If you are dreading the chore of packing lunches for your kids, Eater’s Francky Knapp has some tips and tricks for making the task easier. Fair warning: most of the tips include links to a product.

Starbucks’ fall menu has arrived with 14 new and returning seasonal items. In addition to the ubiquitous pumpkin spice latte, the coffee chain is adding pecan oatmilk cortado, pecan cold foam, Italian sausage egg bites, and a few additional items available exclusively at Starbucks Reserve Roasteries located in Seattle, Chicago, and New York City.

The Guardian runs down the best supermarket strawberry jams in the UK. Only two of the spreads garnered five-star reviews: Duchy Organic strawberry extra jam preserve (available at Waitrose), and Fearne & Rosie strawberry preserve (which can be found at Ocado and Tesco).

Other articles posted this weekend:

• TL;DR
• Seasonal shifts