Cardigan – Mix Apparel, skirt – Boden, flats – Rockport.

October in Sydney is Good Food Month.  Restaurants offer month long special menus and promotions, there are food festivals practically every weekend and a food obsessed city gets even more fanatical about the latest must try desserts, places to have coffee and signature dishes from the big names.

I’m not sure exactly how much I’ll be participating in Good Food Month this year but I did try to get into the zone over the weekend.  I’ve been hearing about all the exciting developments on Parramatta’s Eat Street and entertainment precinct so I thought it’d be nice to take Toddler SSG on a drive to see it for ourselves.  There’s still a fair bit of renovating and road work going on and we were there at a toddler friendly time of early Saturday morning so we didn’t get the full effect of the after hours buzz but we were there.

On Saturday mornings, Eat Street is more of a Market Street.  Many of the restaurants are shut and recovering from a big Friday night leaving the cafes to open for the market crowd.  The markets are held on the street and you can take in a view of its wares from behind the awnings of the al fresco dining areas that line Eat Street.

As first time Parramatta visitors, Toddler SSG and I took the shuttle bus around the city and stopped off at the park.

Before looping around the court houses and returning to the Westfield.

Where we had a another culinary nearly moment.  Poh Ling Liew was hosting a pop up restaurant in the main court of Westfield.  Poh is the ambassador for Papparich  and is hosting events around Sydney celebrating the opening of new Papparich outlets.  Once again, we looked on from afar at the swish set up and the promise of a lunch of Malaysian Delights.  Papparich are opening at the Macquarie Centre too so I’m hoping to take my mum and aunty when they come over in a few weeks.

Parramatta’s town centre has just had a refurbishment with the clock tower being restored to working order and a new water fountain built in front of it.

So what did we actually eat on our little foodie tour?  Maccas.  McChicken Bites for the toddler and a semi healthy soy chicken wrap for me.  We shared a serve of sweet potato wedges which neither of us liked much.  Should’ve gone with the fries.

In other food news from the weekend, I found these pots of lightly dried herbs by Gourmet Garden at Coles.

You use them as you would fresh herbs and I gave the coriander a go in my salad.  They do add some visual pizzazz though the flavour isn’t as intense as the fresh variety when eaten as is.  I suspect they may release more flavour during cooking and that fresh is still best as a salad garnish.

Sunday was New Shanghai dumpling night and Toddler SSG managed to get through a whole serve on his own.

Oh, and I’ve officially entered 2014 with my new paypass card.  It’s now stuck on the back of my phone and apparently it can still work through non metal phone cases.  You can use them to pay for sales of less than $100 and I’m looking forward to mine saving my life on those days when I leave the house with everything but my wallet.

Do you have a paypass card?  Do they really work through phone covers?