Weiner water soup!
My brothers and sister and I grew up in the 50's and 60's in a loving home in the Erie, PA area.
Back then Dad worked 12 or more hours a day every day of the week at a gas station while Mom cared for the seven of us. We had very little yet it was everything we needed and at times we even had government cheese and beans to help us get through the tough times.
Our grandparents lived in Waterford,PA. several miles away and we visited them often. On rare occasions Grandma babysat us while Mom and Dad went shopping or left for a short trip.
Our grandparents were german and very poor and more often than not we ate cow tongue (gross) or hot dogs while we were there. Grandma boiled the hot dogs and fed us dinner and we all knew what we would be having for lunch the next day; the water she had boiled the hot dogs in. She called it wiener water soup. Add some crackers and a piece of buttered bread and you had your lunch.
By the time Dad came to get us we would be more than ready to get home.
My twin brother and I grew up in the middle of America's Dairyland in the 40s and 50s. Thanks to my mother taking home economics in high school, she knew how to make the best of a bad situation and fed us like kings with the plenty of garden fresh food and fruit in season. She canned enough to last throughout the long cold winters.
Our grandmother, too, taught us wonderful breakfast food like crackers and coffee. It tasted best with the heavy sweetness of condensed milk from where my father worked and brought home during the war. Of course, we loved wieners and my twin liked to live on them during college, but we threw out the oily boiling water. I recall making a local recipe wiener hot dish that I had to eat alone (ugh) because it tasted so bad and my brother and other roommate wouldn't eat it. Those were the daze… ;-)
Ron