Swanson, which invented the frozen dinner in the 1950s to give Mom an occasional night off, is showing us what Mom is doing with her free evenings in a new television commercial.

In the ad, she is standing at the top of a grand staircase, dressed in a strapless taffeta gown, and looking like Cinderella on her way to the ball.

And the convenience of frozen food made it all possible.

What was once a special treat -- I remember Swanson fried chicken dinners on a TV tray in front of Sunday night television -- is now a main ingredient in what passes for dinner in the American home.

"These days, cooking is assembly and heating. From scratch, it is not," says Leslie Sarasin, president and chief executive officer of the American Frozen Food Institute in McLean, Va.

"For those of us who were raised in a home where mother had dinner on the table every night -- and she cooked it -- there was for a long time a certain amount of guilt involved in using convenience foods," says Kim Feil, division president of worldwide innovation at Information Resources, a marketing research firm in Chicago.

"For a long time, cake mixes to which you only had to add water wouldn't sell. Manufacturers changed it so you had to add an egg, and it worked," she says.

"Now, it's like, 'The heck with that.' "

According to Food and Drink Weekly, only 75 percent of Americans prepare meals at home -- and only about three times a week. Less than half of those meals are prepared from scratch.

American cooks -- and 77 percent of all dinners in this country are prepared by women -- have a variety of options when it comes to "assembling" dinner:

Take-out, drive-through, delivered. Canned, boxed, in jars and vacuum-sealed. In a bag, in a kit, in a bowl. Pre-marinated, pre-stuffed, pre-chopped and prepared.

But we spent $29.4 billion on frozen food in 2001--- the fastest growing segment of take-home food service. The average American is eating frozen food two to three times a week.

The biggest sellers right now are frozen pizzas -- because the taste has improved, especially with self-rising crusts -- and frozen skillet meals, which come with meat, chopped vegetables or pasta and sauce.

"They make us feel like we are still cooking," says Sarasin.

Meanwhile restaurants, feeling the economic pinch, are putting their products in the freezer case: California Pizza Kitchen, Boston Market and TGI Friday, to name a few.

"Frozens have come light years in the last 10 to 15 years, but especially in the last five to eight years," says Sarasin.

"There is this incredible array of options in your frozen food aisle. And with 60 percent of women working or seeking work, frozens are part of our lifestyle."

And I thought they were only part of my lifestyle.

Dinner shortcuts are among the best kept secrets of American women. We don't want anyone else -- especially our mothers and mothers-in-law -- to know that we don't make a roast every Sunday or soup stock from scratch every Saturday afternoon.

Like Pavlov's dogs, our children begin to salivate at the sound of the microwave bell, but that is nothing any of us talk about in public.

Sarasin says there are plenty of convenience foods available for dinner. (The average American says it takes 40 minutes to prepare dinner but she only has 20 minutes to spare.) So, the battleground is taste.

In response, there are more gourmet selections, more ethnic foods, more spices, more flavoring. In short, more competition for a spot in the grocery cart of the 75 percent of American women who still cook.

Only one thing remains unclear.

How did the other 25 percent get out of making dinner?