I suppose it all started with sweetcorn cobs, but it seems that twin packs are coming into fashion. Tesco has come up with a new presentation, banded together in its prepared salad range, for £1. A 200g mild seasonal four-leaf selection sits alongside a 140g sweet alfresco style salad in this polybag.

For readers involved in mixing and matching the contents for the former, this can contain a selection of four from the choice of green and red batavia, Apollo lettuce, lollo rosso and biondo, and red and green oak leaf. In the alfresco salad, mixed leaves form 70 per cent - iceberg, frisée and romaine - to which has been added seven per cent peppers and 23 per cent carrots.

These carrots are of the traditional orange variety, although I wonder how long it will be before the speciality cream carrot launched by Marks & Spencer, and reported in last week’s FPJ, priced at £1.49 for 500g, finds its way into such mixes. I may be slightly behind due to the postal strike being on when the news broke, but I can add that apart from being exclusive to M&S and grown in Scotland, the variety won this year’s Royal Horticultural Society Award for Merit.

This week, two other M&S lines also caught my eye. With portion control in mind, it is unusual to see potatoes in anything other than large packs, but there is now a 140g offering of daily harvested baby Maris Piper spuds for 79p, grown in Norfolk by John Williams. The pack suggests allowing eight potatoes per person.

On the fruit side, remembering what the trade once called “queer gear” - now generally branded as exotics - there are still more novelties coming forward. Tesco is offering both a super-sized Torres avocado at £1.65 a fruit, as well as a newly named sweet strawberry papaya for £1.50. The sources are equally less well known, coming from Argentina and Jamaica respectively.

Another country that showed great promise in the past - on grapes, melons and peppers, in particular - but has subsequently faded from view is Ethiopia. But it has been rediscovered by Sainsbury’s and is now a source of herbs for the retailer - in this instance, rosemary at 79p for 20g.

And talking of history repeating itself, while Waitrose is known for the numerous traditional English apple varieties that it stocks at this time of year, I was intrigued to see a visitor from the US in the form of McIntosh Red, at £1.99 for a four-tray pack.

And talking of apples, while Halloween is now past, there is no doubt that it has become a major event in the calendar. Lidl capitalised on this with 60-65mm English Cox, labelled Bobbing Apples. I wonder if others will follow suit in time for next October.

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