One by one, the women walk through the kitchen, filling their plastic clothes baskets with frozen entrees.

Today’s offerings are varied – chicken enchiladas, taco soup, cheesy pasta with ham, chicken pot pie, chicken and rice casserole, vegetable and beef soup, slow cooker chili and cheesy chicken manicotti.

The foods, in storage bags and plastic containers, will be in the women’s freezers during the next month, until they’re pulled out to provide a home-cooked meal for a family that just doesn’t have time to cook.

This is the basic operating premise of a food-swap group that’s been coordinated by Lisa Green since March.

“It’s changed our lives,” Green says. “If you work all day long, then take an hour to cook and then clean, it just takes so long.”

The women – usually around eight to 10 – are mostly young mothers who meet monthly to trade meals. Before they come together, they prepare enough of one type of food to make one meal for the other families in the group.

The idea for the food-swap group came after several women went to Kansas City to prepare meals at Your Second Kitchen, which helps customers cook large quantities of food.

They started thinking they could do the same thing cheaper at home. Now, most meals cost $50 to $75 to make in bulk, compared to about $130 at the Kansas City business.

“Making a lot of something that makes 10 meals is a lot easier than cooking 10 meals one time,” says Jamie Gabriel, a group member.

The group has tried a variety of foods in its nine months. Some highlights have included kabobs, pot pies, marinated steaks and chicken cordon blue. They’ve found that breads don’t thaw as well as other foods.

Early on, the women included a list of side dishes on their entree packages. Now, they’ve come to realize their fellow group members can figure out sides on their own.

But they’re still including a recipe of the dish in case it’s popular at their friends’ homes, and Green is hoping to create a cookbook of recipes.

“It’s nice to have your meals already ready,” Green says. “All you have to do it stick it in the oven. The biggest thing is you can have a home-cooked meal without all the work.”

Tricia Venters, another group member, says she only prepares foods that she’s already tried. She doesn’t want her friends to be guinea pigs.

“I’ve never made something for the first time, and I’ve never served it without trying it myself,” she says.

But Venters says the food-swapping has helped her children be open to new foods – without her having to do tons of recipe research.

“It adds variety,” she says. “My kids are always wanting to try something new.”