Real-estate agent Cookie Kwan tells Marge that the house next door to the Simpsons is for sale. Marge decides to give the house a peek so she can compare her family’s lifestyle to her neighbor’s. She and Homer are amazed by the size of the kitchen, which includes every modern convenience a family could hope for. That night Marge tells Homer that although she knew from the beginning she’d never live in luxury, she’d still like to have something a little better in her life. Homer decides to build Marge a new kitchen. Unfortunately Homer’s construction skills leave something to be desired. As Homer dismantles a light fixture, a stream of magazines pour down from above. Marge realizes Homer has been stockpiling Playdude magazine. Homer claims he likes to read the articles, so Marge takes some scissors and clips out all the erotic photographs. Homer dumps the cut-up magazines in the trash. Moments later Bart and Milhouse find them. Bart decides to act like the cool guys in the magazine articles. Meanwhile Marge realizes a contractor needs to finish the work Homer started in the kitchen. The contractor promises to finish the job in three weeks. Two years later, the kitchen is finally complete. Marge decides to celebrate by making something for the church picnic. Her Wasabi Buffalo wings are a huge hit, and even author Thomas Pynchon enjoys them. Later, at the Kwik-E-Mart, Flanders tells Marge about an upcoming Ovenfresh Bakeoff. The winner will become the new face of Auntie Ovenfresh. Marge decides to enter her recipe for dessert dogs — deep-fried cookie dough made to look like a hot dog — in the competition. Later Marge receives a letter stating that she qualified for the bakeoff.

At school Bart invites his classmates to attend a party at his Playdude tree house. The party is a big hit. Actor James Caan shows up, and he ends up walking off with Mrs. Krabappel. Meanwhile, at the Springfield Convention Center, the bakeoff competition gets underway. Marge’s competition does everything it can to gain the advantage. Some of the contestants even stoop to sabotage. Marge is so overwhelmed, she begins to sob. Lisa tells her mother she still has twenty minutes left to fix her entry. Marge sets to work with renewed determination. The competing dishes are locked inside a room for several hours before the judges make their final decisions. Marge accidentally finds herself inside the locked room, so she decides to spike the other chef’s dishes with Maggie’s baby ear-medicine. Unbeknownst to her, Lisa is staring through a door keyhole, and sees everything. Meanwhile some angry parents tell Homer that Bart has been exposing their kids to adult themes.

Thanks to Marge’s sabotage, only two dishes make it into the finals: Marge’s dessert dogs and Brandine’s “armadillo a la road.” Meanwhile Homer climbs into Bart’s tree house and decides to tell Bart the facts of life. Bart screams, climbs out of the tree house, and tells his friends what he heard. The kids all scream. Later Lisa confronts Marge and accuses her of cheating. Marge tells her that sometimes in life, “you just have to lie down with pigs.” As the final battle of the Ovenfresh challenge gets underway, a judge announces that the competition will be decided based on whomever can create the most delicious dish using a surprise ingredient: mayonnaise. Marge distracts Brandine, then opens her purse and takes out the ear medicine. Marge also finds a homemade card in her purse featuring Lisa’s face. It reads, “I look up to you because you let me down.” Marge realizes she’s made a terrible mistake. She tells the judges she sabotaged the other entries. Later, as the Simpsons go grocery shopping, Lisa notices Brandine’s face on an Ovenfresh flour bag. Cletus begins to sob. He says that when Brandine became famous, she decided to run off with James Caan.