Phineas L. MacGuire-- scientist extraordinaire-- has a new chore: cooking dinner every night. He may be a genius, but he knows nothing about following a recipe. On top of that, he has to come up with a mouthwatering recipe for a bake-off-- the prize is $10,0000! And to make matters worse, Evan Forbes, the school bully has taken a liking to Phineas' brownies ... too much of a liking. Now he wants a new batch of brownies every morning, and if Phineas can't keep up, he'll get clobbered for sure. But as it turns out, cooking is a lot like chemistry-- so as long as he's got two great friends to help him, maybe this whole recipe thing won't be too bad after all! In this first part of Phineas L. MacGuire ... gets cooking!, Phineas is assigned a kid's worst nightmare: cooking family dinner! Can Phineas keep his cook in the kitchen?