(Strip Number 826, Original Publication Date, 2 April 1985)
Panel 1: It's dinner time at the Pattermanse and since a MAN who doesn't know what he's doing in the kitchen (because men simply don't cook because Lynn's sitcoms tell her so) is in charge, the main course is hot dogs. Mike displays his ungrateful, defiant nature by pointing out that they had weiners for lunch AND last night's supper.
Panel 2: John sullenly puts on his coat and tells the delighted family that they might as well eat out.
Panel 3: John then sets up the stupid, child-unfriendly punchline by asking Mike what he'll have.
Panel 4: When Mike decides that a hot dog is the most palatable choice on the menu, dim John is as baffled as all adults are supposed to be by this sort of seeming hypocrisy.
Summary: This is because John and Lynn and all the other cement-headed clods who hate children but had them because you're "supposed" to never get is that there's a world of difference between a hot dog boiled to death by a four-eyed jackass with a train fetish and one cooked to perfection by someone who knows what he's doing. It's like how Lynn doesn't especially want to see the difference between mushrooms glopped out of a can and mushrooms that don't taste like crap and feel like rubber.