THINK of school cookery classes and what comes to mind?

Chances are it will include flapjacks, fairy cakes and fudge.

Equally likely, your teacher probably brushed over the nutritional value of those treats in order to persuade you to cook something.

Now, a bestselling Oxford cookery writer has launched on a one-woman mission to turf those calorific classes out and get kids excited about real food.

Charlotte Pike has been running Field and Fork School cookery classes at schools, village halls and offices in and around Oxford for two years.

She buys seasonal fruit and vegetables from local producers, shopping at the Cultivate veg van, and teaches her students how to make everyday meals like soup.

In her words, 'we don't do cakes, we identify vegetables'.

The author of the award-winning Fermented and the Hungry Student Cookbook series charges just £5 per person for each two-hour class, which includes a free lunch, coffee and usually some homemade cake.

She says: "I try to make it an absolute bargain – the idea is it's accessible for everyone.

"It all came out of my experience of delivering private cookery classes at schools around the county: I'd go to schools and teach a wide range of consumer and corporate cookery classes – most classes cost at least £100 for an evening and at that price point it really is a middle class hobby: it's not open to most people and that prevents people from learning.

"I'm really passionate about giving people the skills to lead healthy lifestyles."

One of her biggest campaigns has been getting people to eat seasonally.

"Eating in season is a really good way to increase your nutrition because these things are picked at their peak when they are full of flavour and they are more nutritious.

"When you eat fresh vegetables they have about 60 per cent more nutrition than imported stuff.

"Vegetables in season they can be extremely cheap to buy, they're very nourishing, and can be used in all sort of different ways - curries, soups, all sorts of dishes."

She also urges people to reap the social benefits of food.

"Cooking a meal for your whole family, it's very important to try to cook one meal that everyone will love.

"I've worked extensively on that in food writing because you're saving time, money and effort, but also introducing children to flavours and textures which can even help improve speech."

Born and raised in Dorset, Miss Pike went to Exeter University where she met her current partner and Oxford boy Tony Harker (a former Dragon School and Abingdon pupil who now works for vacuum tycoon James Dyson).

Miss Pike went on to train as a chef at the world-famous Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland under Darina Allen, Rachel Allen and Rory O'Connell.

She and Mr Harker moved back to Oxford together because, as she says, 'we love it here'.

They now live on Cumnor Hill.

She has just finished her latest book Smoked (May 4, Kyle Books), and continues to run Field and Fork, but she set her sights on the next step in her career.

She and Mr Harker are hoping to open and run a food education centre some where in Oxford to run her classes from and also grow their own fruit and veg.

The couple are scouring the city and surrounds for a 12-acre site to buy or lease and have already recruited an architect to design an ecological building.

There, after two years of peripatetic teaching, she will be able to stop worrying about booking the next village hall and focus on her passion: helping people eat healthily.

"What really drives me is showing just how easy it can be to make great food from scratch even at home.

"You can save money, improve your family's health, it is a very sociable skill, it's an important skill and it needs to be passed on.

"Too many people are not learning how to cook."

Find out more at field-fork.co.uk