DERRY — The American table is like a big assembly line.

On the consumption end is the family, hungry from a day of school, work, or — nowadays — job-hunting. They don’t want to wait to eat. And they want lots of food.

It should taste good, but nothing exotic. Chicken marsala? Paella? Please, where’s a box of macaroni and cheese?

On the production end is the stressed-out cook. Budgets are as tight as time. And despite finicky eaters, every cook who watches a TV cooking show wants to put some pizzazz in her pizza.

Welcome Taste of Home. The Wisconsin-based magazine brought its road show to Pinkerton Academy’s Stockbridge Theatre Thursday night.

The Taste of Home Cooking School is sponsored by the New Hampshire Union Leader. Some 880 masters of their family kitchen sold out the event.

For some, it was a true school — a place to refine their talents with useful tips, such as using the bottom of a mixing bowl to stretch out pizza dough.

For others, it was an even swap. The $15, cheap-seat ticket more than covered the goody bag of utensils, coupons and recipes distributed to guests. But for most, it was fun.

“I enjoy it. We make it a girls’ night out,” said Kathy Valentine, a Salem office worker who was attending her third cooking school.

A nearly all-female audience knows how to have fun. They jumped and hollered when encouraged by the emcees or Chef Michael Barna. They ohhhhhh’d over Barna’s presentation of a finished meal.

“It’s just fun. “There’s no comparison to (cooking shows) on TV,” said Ethel Liapis, an East Hampstead retiree.

“I’m not here to teach them how to brunoise-dice a piece of celery. I’m here to have fun,” Barna said.

On stage, he joked about the accents and culture of Philadelphia, where he lives. And he made light of complicated recipes.

“This recipe calls for Vietnamese cinnamon, ginger and cloves. This is Taste of Home. Forgetaboutit,” he said as he held up his solution — pumpkin pie spice.

Myril Cox was one of the few men in the audience.

Cox got the cooking bug in the Army. He is now disabled, so he cooks for his wife and their grown children while she works.

Cox likes to cook extravagantly; he makes a mean shrimp scampi, his wife said.

But his children turn their noses at such meals and prefer the casseroles that he learns from Taste of Home.

“We bring him along,” said his wife, Gloria, who attended with several co-workers. “It gives him good ideas of what to cook.”