I don't really like cooking with premade ingredients, but my mother-in-law got me this for Christmas, so I gave it a read-through. A lot of the recipes looked delicious. (the gorgeous photography and presentation certainly helped with that.) They just didn't look very healthful, even by less stringent preferences than my own organic and unprocessed-preferences. Lee offers ways to make recipes somewhat lower fat--but comfort and soul food is difficult to really "healthy up." there's some great mixed drink/ cocktail recipes in here, and some recipes that are unprocessed enough for my tastes. I know the preparatory ease would come in handy for party fare. I'm going to give them a try--I hope they are as good as they look!