We haven't had Ina on TV here in Australia for that long, but she is gathering a huge following. Loved the recipes in the book but thought the book would contain more helpful hints, surely she has learnt many valuable trouble shooting/time saving/setting up techniques over the years. The book was good though, I would recommend it for anyone looking for a great collection of her wonderful recipes. Lesley Garard Queensland Australia.

Ina Garten cooks the food I like to cook. It's uncomplicated to prepare and delicious to eat. Barefoot Contessa Parties has been a really useful addition to my very large cook book collection. I have used it mainly for everyday meals rather than specifically for 'parties'. The ingredients are generally readily available (in Australia) and the instructions are clear. I like that Ina has included some of the more basic recipes such as pesto for instance. I must have over 10 recipes for pesto but this one is the best (although I never add oil to the pasta water I've been told that the sauce slides off rather than clings to the pasta).

I love all things Barefoot Contessa so I am prejudiced, but I made the
apple crostada this morning and it is fabulous! I usually make 2-3 of
her recipes every week. Love all her books-

Party foods are different than the foods you expect to find in a normal cookbook. As Ms. Garten says, you want foods you can prepare in advance and join the party yourself. But, it is also a good thing to do some of the cooking while the party is going on. Perhaps she has higher class parties than I do, but I find that parties seem to break into smaller groups, one of which is in the kitchen. And to cook something - like fresh baked bread while the party is going on is a good thing to do. If nothing else it puts out such good smells.

I also find some of her dishes would be just as suitable for use with a regular meal. I'm going to try her Spinach Gratin tonight. I like spinach anyway, and perhaps it's just the picture, but it looks and sounds so good.

If the weather were just a bit warmer, I'd also prepare the Vanilla Armagnac Ice Cream. But I think I'll wait a few weeks.

Any way, here are some very good ideas, and that's why you buy cookbooks.

Love this book, along with the rest of the Contessa Books. The fish stew is excellent, a little bit of work, but it freezes well so I just double it and freeze half!

I love Ina's cooking style and I am always in awe of someone that can throw a party wherein they make everything themselves and still entertain the masses.
However, I have noticed that there are problems with some of the recipes themselves. I made the chinese chicken salad and it was *extremely* salty and greasy, even though I cut down the oil because I thought 1 cup of oil was way too much. The recipe will need some serious tweaking for the home kitchen.
The other recipe(s) that put me off were for the chocolate chip and peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. The recipes cannot be right! I thought it might just be a typo, but all three (there is one for chocolate chocolate chip cookies which I haven't tried because the other two were really terrible) are written with practically the same instructions. I have made a lot of cookies in my day and I've never had any cookies come out as badly as these did. There is no way you're going to bake tablespoons of cookie dough at 350 for 15 minutes and not have them come out burnt to a crisp! Mine were burnt on the outside and raw in the middle, and I took them out early. If you look at the picture where she is scooping out the cookie dough she's clearly using a very large cookie scoop for her cookies...so I'm wondering if someone made a mistake in the editing? Those recipes frustrated me to no end. I finally gave up after making the carrot cake cupcakes. They just weren't that great...they were bland and kind of dry.
I love Ina. I want to trust Ina! But I think the recipes in this book are hit and miss. I don't want to go out on a bad note so I will say that the recipes for the lemon cake and orange chocolate chunk cake are worth the price of admission for me. (Those are my favorites that I've tried so far...I need a break from this book after the disappointing recipes.) Maybe the recipes don't all translate right when they're scaled down from large bakery size batches? I hope that's what it is.

Book received extremely fast and in perfect condition. Very pleased with purchase. The book itself is chock full of wonderful recipes. Priced competively. Would purchase again.

This is a book of user friendly recipes that would be fun for non-party givers as well as those who like to entertain. Ina Garten writes with such enthusiasm and rich descriptions that while this is not a basic book, it certainly would encourage a novice cook to try her recipes.

The apple crisp is the best verwion I have ever found and I have been cooking for over 50 years.

The book has great eye appeal and would make an appealing gift.

Her books and tv shows make it so easy to understand and do! What a great personality too! I just love Barefoot Contessa!

A good number of excelent recipes. Have tried quite a few. Great!

Very few books feature foods that go together at particular events. This one does all that and provides beautiful pictures of the finished dish a well. Ina Garten is one of the best!

So far everything I've made has been wonderful. Best of all, her pictures look like real food made by a real person -- unlike the photos in Bon App or Gourmet. I love her stories and ideas. Excellent.

Everything I have ireded frin Amazon has arrived in a timely manner and done
very professionally. thanks

I adore Ina and all of her cookbooks. Just made the chocolate ganache cake in this one for a dinner party and it was a HUGE hit! It is so easy to make, delicious, and impresses all your guests. Keep the great recipes coming, Ina!

I have been a fan of Ina Garten's since I started watching her Barefoot Contessa cooking programmes here in New Zealand.

Ina Garten seems to have a genuine joy in the cooking and preparing of food for others that is contagious. She puts such a lot of love into her recipes and this is then expressed by the enthusiasm she shares in her recipe books.

I am therefore very happy with my purchase of her Parties cookbook as it adds still further to the other books I have from her pen. The recipes are simple yet sophisticated and the presentation in the book of all that goes into preparation for a party, the shortcuts and the pre-planning all offer the reader useful insights for taking on parties themselves.

I would definitely recommend this book.

This cookbook is absolutely fantastic. As are all of Ina Garten's books. I have cooked at least half of the recipes and they never fail to get rave reviews. The recipes use common ingredients which are easy to find and no fancy techniques are required. It is also nicely illustrated. Watch out though if you are "fat" conscious! Low-fat is not her style!

I wouldn't start with this book -- I actually 'inherited' it from someone who didn't care for it. I like the recipes, but the book is laid out as a series of party menus, rather than desserts in one section, main dish in one section, etc. While I appreciate the menu suggestions (they are a big help, as I am sometimes stymied as to what to serve with what), I would rather see them listed in the back of the book, rather than have the book organized this way. Otherwise, the book is stellar.

I must disagree with some of the reviews that have placed this book at par or below. Ina hits it out of the park yet again with Barefoot Parties! It is true that you will not find your run of the mill "holiday" parties in here, but who needs more books on those types of parties? We need ideas and recipes for all of the months in between! Parties! delivers just that. First of all, the recipes work; every time. Secondly, Ina chooses menues that one might not associate with that particular get together. It's a refreshing book that you will use over and over again not only for parties but for every night of the week.

There are some good recipes in this book. There are also several that require exotic ingredients not easily found in the Midwest, where I live. As for the party suggestions, it turns out that Ms. Garten holds parties in the Hamptons, supplied by her specialty cooking store. No one I know is going to have a party that remotely resembles hers, including me. The book may be worth the Amazon price for the handful of really good recipes. Don't look to it for party planning -- if you want this kind of a shindig, hire a caterer.

I have enjoyed reading and using some of the recipes from this book. Ina Garten creates recipes that are both simple and elegant.

A beautiful book to read and just to have on your coffee table.
But an even better book to use. Beautifully illustrated and wonderfully written.

I cook family dinners for my children and grandchildren every week, and trying to come up with different and delicious menus to cook is a challenge. Not so with the Barefoot Contessa books. When "stumped" for something good to cook, I always find the perfect recipes in her books. Best of all, because time is always a factor, her recipes are fast, easy, and special at the same time.

I've used this book more than most in my collection - quantities are easy to double (or more) and the menus go very well together.

My favourites are the pea and pesto salad and the shortcakes with the cream biscuits. The tea sandwiches are also fantastic!

I recommend this one to my friends all the time.

Ina has a way of simplifying cooking and producing dishes with exceptional flavor. I've tried several recipes and all have been met with rave reviews. I have so enjoyed this book, I bought her other three.

Beautiful cookbook. Ina Garten never lets you down. Her cookbooks are masterpieces of beauty and fabulous recipes. You need her whole series. This party book has many great ideas for even veteran home cooks. Enjoyable just to read and look at the pictures!

I love this book. I have used the recipes countless times. Especially the one with shrimp and mango salsa. Roasted pork, endive salad with avocado, pesto, delicious....

I so agree with her entertaining philosophy, entertaining friends especially, is about enjoying each other's company better experience when you have delicious food...!

Ina Garten has it down to a science - but a very relaxed science, at that. She teaches you how to throw a dinner party, garden party, even a child's birthday party with maximum style and class, and minimum stress. I love this book. I love the recipes and ideas and have used many of them on different occasions - often mixing and matching from different sections. The book is divided into four seasons, which makes perfect sense when planning a party - because it makes life so much easier when you use what is seasonally available for recipes as well as planning seasonally appropriate venues and activities for the party - indoor vs. outdoor, what type of drinks to enjoy, etc. I can't say enough good things about this book - you need it in your cookbook collection. I loaned it to someone and missed it dearly for the several weeks it was gone. I even considered purchasing a second one - just in case.

This cookbook is great to have in the kitchen. I've cooked several of the recipes and they've always turned out successfully! Most of the recipes are easy to follow and taste great.In the same category of book I book Simple and Simply Delicious by Sylvie Rocher. Both of those book are great

I just love to read the intros to great cookbooks. They tell the story of the rest of the work. Here, what I never knew before about this great cook: how she came to the Barefoot Contessa: She loved to throw great parties!

Arranged around the four seasons, she provides four menus for events like Sunday breakfast, Canoe trip, Birthday, Christmas, Snow Day, Fireside Dinner.

Great solid recipes that are not too complicated or overpowering on the exotic ingredients nor techniques, just great party offerings such as: Perfect Poached Fruit;Carmel Chocolate Nut Ice Cream; Smashed Sweet Potatoes with Apples (this is soooo good!!); Fennel Soup Gratin; Vegetaple PotPie.

Couple this with lavish Clarkston Potter superb layout, writing and color photos, and advice on scheduling, decorating, invites, etc. and this is great work for you who like Ina enjoy feeding and entertaining others. Love your advice: Never seem like you're not cool about what's happening, even though it seems disastrous.

I love this book. The recipes are wonderful. I'm a big fan of ina garten. I offer this book to one of my friend and she was delighted, it's a beautiful book.
I also bought Simple and Simply Delicious by Sylvie Rocher it's also a beautiful, wonderful book.

This is my favorite of Ina's cookbooks because the recipes are so easy and the party ideas are so much fun! Even if you aren't planning a party, the recipes can be used daily for regular meals and the dishes can be mixed with other recipes throughout the book.

Definitely worth buying for the gourmet and regular cook alike!

This book has gorgeous photos and is fun, but it's not really designed for a regular person's life. Garten's idea of parties, which she writes in the introduction, are mostly small gatherings. This means that the book isn't very helpful for larger groups.
There are some tips on organizing the party, but not as much I would have liked, such as a timeline of how when to prepare things. Of course, when you are only doing a small party this isn't as important, but even for the tea for 25 she doesn't tell you how you should store things or what you should make first and last.

My major complaint would probably be the cost of the recipes. Wow. This book is about how we might like to entertain our closest and dearest friends if we had a vacation house in the Hamptons and a BMW (oh wait...). So, really the book is about an ideal lifestyle most of us just wish we had.

It's a fun read and has some interesting recipe ideas, but is not all that practical.

All of Ina Garten's books are great. Recipes are easy to follow, ingredients readily available, and dishes always get rave reviews. I use her recipes on an almost daily basis. Many great ideas for enteretaining also. All 3 books are must haves.

I love Ina's shows and books and have found that the recipes always turn out just as they should. This is the second Barefoot Contessa book I have bought and although I haven't made quite as many recipes from this one as I have from Family Style (I just got Parties!), I can tell already that this one is a winner.
So far I've made the Spinach Gratin & Apple Crostata, both to rave reviews. ANyone who tells you that her books are not value for money is totally nuts. All of her recipes are totally dependable and keep me coming back again and again.
Please try he Family Style. It's magnificent!

This is Ina Garten's second of three cookbooks and the one most closely patterned after the flagship work of her mentor, Martha Stewart. It presents ideas and recipes organized for small scale entertaining at home. As such it is no match for Stewart's `Entertaining' volume, to which I would direct you if you need to plan any serious parties with more than eight guests.

Garten's first book was simply recipes from her catering business. They were probably the best she had. This book adds value to a simple collection of recipes by organizing courses into party menus designed for sixteen different family and close friend occasions. The third book seems to be composed of leftovers.

The choice of events to celebrate is a bit quirky in that traditional occasions such as Christmas, Graduation, Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, Mardi Gras / Carnavale, and St. Patrick's Day are not included. Rather, ten out of the sixteen are `moveable feasts' in that the menu is appropriate to just about any occasion. Some are limited by season such as `Outdoor Grill' and `Canoe Trip', but many are generic indoor excuses to have a good time, such as `Sunday Breakfast', `Pizza Party', and `Fireside Dinner'.

Unlike Stewart's book, there is really not much serious advice on how to organize for parties. Much of it is common sense plus clever ideas for special events, such as the idea to pack picnic portions in Chinese takeout cartons.

Garten has the advantage of claiming with full justification that her recipes are all specifically developed and test to work in a small party environment, as she has been in the catering business doing just this thing for many years. On reading her recipes and seeing many of them done on her Food Network TV show, I believe almost all of these recipes are simple and short in prep time, if not very cheap. The few recipes which take more than a page of large type are the baked goods. As Garten says herself, many are more a matter of `assembling' than they are of cooking.

Next to books from publishing house Alfred A. Knopf, cookbooks from Clarkson N. Potter have the most distinctive style. Where Knopf's books tend to follow the sedate style of Julia Child's classics, Potter's books for Stewart and Garten go for lots of large, glossy, very good photographs. Following the maxim that one eats with their eyes before their mouth, this may even help sell cookbooks with it's appeal to the visceral. Unfortunately, a rational look at the content versus the price suggests this book is a bit short on value. I will give Garten credit for referring to recipes in her earlier book rather than filling pages in this book with repeated recipes. I may be visually challenged, but photographs in cookbooks rarely create a positive impression and often create a negative impression if they are poorly done. In this book, I think they are a wash. They are too caught up in being artistic to give great value to the culinary, but they are not bad photos, so, they do nothing for my appreciation of the recipes.

At $35 list price for sixteen menus and about eighty new recipes, I say this is only a modest value for the cost. The tie-in to the TV show adds some value, but not much. I would recommend Sheila Lukins' book `Celebrate' as a serious resource for family gatherings. I already suggested Martha Stewart's book as a better source for larger events.

I recommend this book to any Ina Garten fans plus anyone who already has the other volumes recommended in this review, and simply needs more ideas. Professional caterers are an obvious choice. The book delivers the expected content in an attractive package. Nothing more.