[Bodum locking lid containers. | photo by Jean Lachat/Sun-Times]

Back from the International Home and Housewares Show at McCormick Place, where the breadth of reusable food containers -- stackable, collapsible, microwaveable -- was impressive. It gives me hope. Maybe people are cooking more, and thus producing leftovers that need containing.

But I know better.

Harry Balzer, vice president of the market research firm NPD Group and the guy I turn to whenever I want to know how people are really eating because he has the data to prove it, tells me what we are doing more of is eating at home.

And, he says, what we're eating more of are frozen foods. And the fastest-growing "preparation method" ("cooking" is such a loose term these days -- see Exhibit A, Sandra Lee), not surprisingly, has been warming and heating.

So kudos to these kitchenware companies who are paying attention and building nifty vents into the lids of their space-saving, eco-friendly containers.

Some day, when we're all actually cooking, we'll have somewhere to put the food.