Send us your hard-times hints

HI, I'M PENNY Pincher, and, like you, I'm bummed by bailouts for tanking banks and bumbling billionaires while I'm standing here in the supermarket figuring my savings on buying store brand vs. name brand mac-and-cheese.

So let's put our heads and our crockpots together, you and me, and share our (and our grandmas') survival techniques for getting through this Thing - dirt-cheap dinners, fashions for a fraction, cut-rate recreation, marked-down movies.

Please send your rock-bottom recipes, frugal family secrets and hard-times hints to or by mail to Penny Pincher, Philadelphia Daily News, P.O. Box 7788, Philadelphia 19101, and I'll gratefully share them right here in this column.

Let's start with this delicious dish from a dollar-conscious Daily News newshawk:

Staffer Dafney's Penny-Pinching Pizza: Take an English muffin. Apply a layer of pasta sauce, then a layer of shredded cheese (those three-cheese mixes are great!) Hit it again with the pasta sauce, then again with the shredded cheese. Bake it at 350 degrees. Gobble it. Take another English muffin . . .

Bee-yoo-ti-ful Free Sundays: The Philadelphia Museum of Art waives its $14 admission on Sundays, so you pay what you wish. A gazillion great paintings, free! Running up the museum steps, free! Gasping for breath as your whole life passes before your eyes, free! Posing with the Rocky statue, free! Walking miles along the mighty Schuylkill afterward, free!

Movie, popcorn & soda: Two bucks! The Bridge Cinema de Lux on Walnut Street near 40th, offers 1 p.m. Monday matinees of silver-screen classics w/popcorn and soda for two dollars. Today: "The Stranger"(1946), with Edward G. Robinson and Orson Welles; March 9: "Behave Yourself" (1951) with Shelly Winters.

Get the idea? Join the Recession Resistance! Send me your stuff!