About

Hi, I’m Molly Parr.

I began writing Cheap Beets as a result of my dearest husband Rich getting laid off pretty unexpectedly a few years back. Thank goodness, we are both happily employed now, but there are millions of people who aren’t, and some who are employed are still just scraping by. My hope with this blog is to help people eat delicious food without spending a lot of money.

The tricks I have developed include not eating a lot of meat and having a well-stocked pantry. I try very hard to not use ingredients that are a bit pricey like whole vanilla beans and fancy cheeses. I do try to eat seasonally and locally whenever possible, and have discovered that it isn’t as expensive as I used to think. A lot of my discoveries are through a willingness to go places I’ve never been before, and talking to as many people as possible. If I do use something like saffron, it’s because I’ve gone to the Armenian markets in Watertown. And I will always make note if something sounds expensive, like nuts, with an explanation as to where I found them at a reasonable price, like Ocean State Job Lot.

I live in Boston, grew up in Western Massachusetts, went to New York City for college, and lived in Jerusalem for a little bit.

I work in Development and Alumni Relations at Boston University and have been taking full advantage of their tuition remission by slowly and steadily working towards a Master’s Degree in Gastronomy and Food Studies. There’s always a chance I might get pretty dorky when talking about certain dishes or foods, so please excuse me in advance if that does happen.

Now is the part where bloggers seem to talk about their fancy camera, but I have a simple point and shoot. (It wouldn’t be very Cheap Beets if I did have one, come to think of it.) Sometimes Rich and I talk about investing in something nicer, but he always reminds me of the drummer Buddy Rich, who, when asked why he didn’t have a super-fancy drum set with all the bells and whistles, replied that he was still learning how to play the four drums he had. That’s Rich’s very nice way of reminding me I do a lot of fumbling with even the simplest of electronic things. I’ll be the first one to admit that anything that plugs in and beeps is beyond my ken. Please don’t ask me to reset the alarm clock, use the DVD player, or download music to my iPod. It’s a small miracle that I figured out how to set up this blog. Yes, it’s that bad. I can, however, use the record player quite skillfully.

I don’t do product reviews, give-aways, link exchanges or take advertisements. It wouldn’t be very Cheap Beets if I did. I will, however, write about nice books and cookbooks that come my way as I’m always up for a good read or new recipe.

I’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to leave comments. You can become a fan on Facebook or follow me @CheapBeets on Twitter where I try to highlight interesting food news and special food-related deals I hear about. And please feel free to drop me a line at Cheapbeets at Gmail dot com.

Thanks so much for stopping by.