What is Budget Bytes?
We believe good food doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. We believe you can create meals that you’re proud of, meals that make you feel full and healthy, meals that make you want to brag on social media, meals that will make you want your leftovers (no, really). We believe you can have all of this without spending your whole paycheck, buying a bunch of fancy kitchenware, or spending all day in the kitchen. We believe you can spend less and enjoy more.
Our History
Budget Bytes was born in 2009 when founder, Beth Moncel, was drowning in student loan debt and trying to make ends meet on a meager hourly wage. She began calculating down to the penny everything she was spending on food. After a few quick calculations, Beth started noticing some patterns… Some ingredients were budget busters and some were budget savers! So she started to strategically craft recipes, tweaking the ratios of budget-savers and budget-busters, always making sure to use simple ingredients that would also leave her satisfied. Being the nerdy number cruncher she is, Beth couldn’t wait to share the recipes with the world.
Since the launch of BudgetBytes.com, Budget Bytes has been teaching people all around the world how to cook with their simple recipes and step-by-step photo instructions. We now have a team of recipe creators, social media masters, and techy number crunchers to keep the budget recipes flowing! You can find our print book at your nearest book store, our mobile app in the App store, or come visit us on every major social media platform. We hope you stick around, explore our extensive recipe archives, and whip up something delicious!
Meet Our Team
Marsha McDougal
Senior Content Manager
Marsha is a Nashville native and the food blogger behind MapleJubilee where she shares simple, healthy-ish recipes for busy families and home cooks. As a cancer survivor, Marsha’s goal is to share more recipes using whole foods and real ingredients! She enjoys practicing her food photography, spending time with her family, and sharing her bubbly personality and food recipes on her YouTube channel.
Jess Rice
Senior Recipe Developer
Jess Rice finds joy and purpose in instructing aspiring chefs and home cooks alike. Chef Jess was recently working as a Chef Professor at Niagara College in Canadian wine country, teaching international students from all over the world food theory and classic culinary techniques before moving back to Nashville. Her diverse experience also includes working (literally) every position in a restaurant to traveling all over the world as a private chef to celebrities and rock ‘n roll legends. As a successful restaurateur, she helped shape the local food scene in Nashville with the debut of her restaurant AVO and its innovative and flavorful offerings. Jess’ passion for culinary excellence is evident in her diverse roles within the dynamic world of food. She’s excited to share her love for food with our readers at BudgetBytes!
Paige Rhodes
Social Media and Community Manager
Paige is a food blogger, author, and social media manager based in Louisville, Ky. On her blog, My Modern Cookery, she shares modern takes on classic recipes. She’s the author of three cookbooks, The 5-Ingredient Vegetarian Cookbook: 75 Effortless Recipes for Busy Cooks, 30-Minute Meatless Cookbook: Delicious Vegetarian Recipes for Busy People, and The Home Cook’s Guide to Journaling.
Meet Our Content Contributors
Beth Moncel
Founder
I’m a food lover, number cruncher, and meticulous budgeter. I love science and art, and the way they come together when I cook. I love to create, problem-solve, and learn new things. Making great food is my passion, my purpose, and my favorite thing to share with others. Although I retired from running Budget Bytes in 2024, I continue to consult with team on various projects!
Krista Teigan
Contributor
In 2014, after a decade of work in the HR and Technical Communication fields, Krista decided to follow her passion for healthy cooking by starting her food blog, Destination Delish. Along the way, she honed her recipe development and food photography skills, and today, she is thrilled to be helping others in the food blogging space to develop and photograph mouth-watering recipes. Krista lives in Shoreview, Minnesota with her husband and two children. Outside of the kitchen, she enjoys exploring the Twin Cities food scene, cheering for her fave Minnesota sports teams, sweating on her Peloton, and jamming out to 90s and 2000s hits.
Monti Carlo
Contributor
Monti Carlo is a Puerto Rican Telly Award-winning food TV personality, food writer, and special events chef. The author of Everyday Caribbean and the upcoming Spanglish (Simon & Schuster 2025) has also been published in The Washington Post, Bon Appetit, Men’s Journal, and Today. Monti works with the prestigious James Beard Foundation as an Advisor, Host, and Awards Judge. Catch Monti on Netflix, Food Network, Cooking Channel, Tastemade, PBS, Good Morning America, The Today Show, and (of course) all over Budget Bytes!
Aysegul Sanford
Contributor
Aysegul Sanford, aka Ice, is the author behind foolproofliving.com, where she shares healthy tried and true recipes that are made without the use of refined sugars. She grew up in Turkey but traveled throughout the world always on a mission to further broaden her knowledge of cooking and flavors. Her favorite toy is her camera and she is almost always in the kitchen taking pictures of delicious food.
Carmy Do
Contributor
Carmy is the blogger behind carmyy.com where she shares easy healthy-ish recipes from meal preps to weeknight dinners. She also created onepotonly.com where she shares recipes that only require one pot so cleaning up is a breeze on busy weeknights. Her goal is to share easy-to-follow recipes that help build confidence in beginner home cooks and make cooking enjoyable. She loves experimenting in the kitchen, taking cooking classes, and traveling to eat all the food. Carmy’s parents immigrated from Vietnam to Canada, where she was born and raised in the Chinese-Vietnamese community.
Dara Yu
Contributor
Dara Yu is an LA-based Chinese American chef. Her career started in the MasterChef Junior kitchen at age 12 where she placed as runner-up in season one. Following her run on MasterChef Junior, she worked in restaurants, food media, and culinary education. She graduated from The Culinary Institute of America, with a high honors degree in Baking and Pastry Arts. Most recently, she was crowned the youngest champion of season 12 of MasterChef “Back to Win”. She finds inspiration from her early childhood food memories, cooking with her Chinese New Zealander grandmother, international trips to places like Italy and Japan, and her love for California’s diverse food culture.
Olena Osipov
Contributor
Olena Osipov has spent the last 11 years building her website, ifoodreal.com, making it her mission for you to cook quick and easy healthy meals for your family. She grew up in Ukraine watching her grandma cook with real food. Now she combines her recipes with a sprinkle of nutrition education and budget and time-saving skills (as a mom of 2), to help you eat healthy while living a busy life!
Cassie Heilbron
Contributor
Cassie Heilbron is the creator of Cook It Real Good – a food blog that focuses on quick, easy and healthy recipes, with a bit of indulgence mixed in between for good measure. Cassie is from Queensland in Australia and loves to share her favourite Aussie recipes with her readers around the world.
Dalya Rubin
Contributor
Dalya is a trained chef who specializes in recipe development & food photography for her clients and personal food blog itsrainingflour.com. Dalya’s main focus on her blog is healthful recipes that are gluten free and dairy free! Her goal is to encourage readers to be comfortable in the kitchen and to make her recipes their own, using whichever ingredients one has in their pantry. Dalya is always cooking up a storm in her Manhattan apartment turned photography studio & test kitchen!
Featured In:
Featured In:
- NPR’s Life Kit – To Save Money on Groceries, Try These Tips Before Going to the Store
- NPR’s Planet Money – The Origins of the Influencer Industry
- PBS News Hour – Are You A Smart Shopper?
- Eater.com – When Times are Tough, I Turn to Budget Bytes
- Yahoo Finance – Inexpensive Potluck Meals That Don’t Seem Cheap
- Yahoo – How to Save Money on Eggs, Milk, and Butter This Holiday Season
- The Today Show – Budget-friendly shopping tips to save you money this Thanksgiving
- ABC News – Easy recipe to upgrade canned chickpeas for a money-saving meal
- WSJ.com – How to Navigate Rising Food Prices as Inflation Surges
- Huffpost.com – The Best Food Storage Containers To Start Meal Prepping, According To Experts
- Heated from Medium.com – This Thrifty Blogger Dishes on Her Least Expensive Meal
- The Financial Diet Podcast – Beth of Budget Bytes on Meal Prep, Cheap Recipes, and the Best Things at Trader Joe’s
- Healthline – 11 Healthy Eating Accounts Worth Following on Social Media
- Well + Good – This Healthy West African Peanut Stew Costs Just $1 Per Serving
- MarketWatch – This woman slashed her grocery bill using tricks she picked up working at Whole Foods
- Money – 3 Mistakes That Are Costing You Tons of Money at the Grocery Store, According to a Budget Food Blogger
- DatingAdvice.com – Budget Bytes: Affordable Recipes Couples Can Make on Dates at Home
- DatingAdvice.com – The Budget Bytes Website Helps Couples Find New Ways To Spice Up Date Nights at Home
- BadCredit.org – Budget Bytes Helps Home Cooks Have Healthy Dinners Without Going Into Debt
- Food Heaven Podcast – Balanced Eating on a Budget with Budget Bytes
- Parents.com – 9 Seriously Easy Freezer Meals to Make Before Giving Birth
- Thekitchn.com – Budget Bytes Shares Her Week of Inexpensive Dinners
- BYU Radio, Lisa Valentine Clark Show
- SELF – 10 Easy Ways to Make Your Thanksgiving Budget Friendly
- SELF – If You’re Cooking on a Budget, You Need These Foods in Your Pantry
- The Kitchn – 10 People Share the Real-Life Lessons Meal Prep Taught Them
- Mic.com – Follow These 21 Twitter Accounts to Get Smarter About Money
- Buzzfeed – Here’s What a Food Blogger Actually Eats in a Day
- Panel Speaker, 2017 Smart Kitchen Summit
- Dishing With Delishes podcast
- AZ Central
- Saveur Blog Awards – 2016 Winner, Best How-To Food Blog
- Wisconsin Public Radio
- Food Blogger Pro podcast
- The Kitchn – Beth Moncel’s 8 Money-Saving Habits for Better Cooking
- Feedfeed features
- Retail Me Not
- Life Hacker
- Toast – The Best 50 Blogs in the US