To me, the whole point of a casserole is "quick and easy," so I want recipes where I just dump things into the casserole dish and put them in the oven. But, like many other casserole and "hot dish" cookbooks, most of the recipes in this book require you to do a tremendous amount of cooking and prep before you put the stuff in the casserole dish -- and, since the ingredients are already cooked, why do they need an hour of baking time? Answer: so they can be called "casseroles" or "one-dish meals". Most of these things could be stirred together and served right after the stove-top cooking process (maybe with minor adjustments), without wasting another hour in the oven. I would also add that many of these casseroles are loaded with butter and are too fattening for me. I took this book out of the library and photocopied about a dozen things -- that was it.