My mother is helping your job security if you’re working at a processing plant that makes frozen foods.

She’s a lover of all things microwavable. The easier the better. Just bring on the Stouffer’s chicken pot pies - her favorite at the moment. Running a close second are frozen Asian-themed meals.

The funny thing is, I grew up at a time when my mother was in the kitchen making most of our meals from scratch. Yet, she has evolved into a frozen food junkie. I should add that my mother is going to be 91 in a few months, so I shouldn’t be surprised that she has finally rejected the effort behind scrubbing, chopping, dicing and shredding raw vegetables, not to mention the dredging, basting, marinating and sometimes hours-long cooking of meat and poultry.

So, bring on the frozen food that requires all the specialty equipment that precedes its appearance in her Frigidaire freezer. She may be elderly, but she’s not the only one whose once-cold attitude toward frozen meals has thawed.

According to the American Frozen Foods Institute and Euromonitor International, back in 2004, frozen food sales were $41 billion. Last year they reached $56 billion, with 2013 projected to reach $65 billion.

If you’re involved in a cooling or freezing operation at a food-processing facility, thank you for feeding my mother. But you also might want to thank her - and lots of other women - for her help in keeping your production line running. (Women still do most of the meal preparation in the United States.)

Unpleasant as the recession is, it’s pushed up the consumption of frozen food. Many stay-at-home mothers have gone back to work to make ends meet, and when the kids holler “What’s for dinner?” each night, there needs to be something to put on their plates, and fast.

Anne Armel, Group Publisher, armela@bnpmedia.com