A LOCAL cooking guru plans to give a taste of Bermuda to people from all over the world by setting up a new international cooking school on the island.

Gourmet chef Judith Wadson is currently teaching cooking and nutrition to seven Bermudians in her home in a programme called Foodarts. By the autumn, she hopes to expand to take in international students.

Miss Wadson is the author of Bermuda: Traditions & Tastes. She studied at the Institute of Culinary Education (formerly known as Peter Kump's New York Cooking School) in Manhattan and was a blue riband honours graduate.

After graduating she worked at the famous Alice Waters Chez Panisse Cafe in Berkeley, California as a prep cook and intern. Now she wants to bring her experience to Bermuda and the world.

"At Chez Panisse they only used ingredients grown in California except for the odd salmon that was caught by someone they knew in Alaska," she said.

"That experience underscored the way I grew up in Bermuda eating fresh, local seasonal foods." She said as a child, the only protein available was freshly caught fish and locally grown meats. There was no frozen food in her house.

"We only ate what was grown or caught locally and I do that today for the most part," she said. "One of my earliest memories is husking corn on the back steps of our kitchen while my brothers steered live lobsters across the lawn.

"My brother Tom kept chickens and ducks and grew vegetables alongside our parents' plot outside our home during childhood and he eventually went to study agriculture at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. He cultivates around 30 acres in different pockets around the island now."

It is this philosophy of living off the land that she plans to incorporate into her school.

"The students are going to use ingredients grown on local farms," she said. "We will go on outings to various places like my brother Tom's farm, or the Botanical Gardens or on foraging outings for herbs."

Miss Wadson said students would stay in Bermuda for a week at local guest houses.

"I will try to keep the cost of the course down," she said. "I want this to appeal to ordinary people. I want people to experience the joys of living off the land and eating nutritiously. Something like this will really help Bermuda's tourism. What this is, is cultural tourism. My students are going to see a different side of Bermuda."

She began offering cooking classes locally in January. She has had four sessions since then on topics ranging from an introduction to cooking with whole foods, levels 1 and 2 to using glorious grains and healthy hors d'oeuvres.

"Since January I have had four sessions of the introduction course," she said. "Next month I will be doing a second course for people who want to continue. Right now, I have a small kitchen that only takes seven students.

"What I really want is a small building with residential zoning with a small garden so I could switch the place to be a teaching kitchen and have 15 students, have a convection oven and six-burner stove. Right now, I lecture and some of the students get up and help if they want to."

Her cooking lessons focus on eating healthy and she has had some help from nutritionist and wholistic health expert Erin Moran.

"I'm so glad I have found something I love to do," said Miss Wadson. "Sharing what I know gives me a lot of joy. I also teach people how to write, casually. It is an innate part of who I am. You get a lot of laughs when people are learning to cook. I wanted to be a teacher when I was young but someone handed me an article saying there are too many kindergarten teachers."

She said most local high-schools no longer taught cooking or home economics.

"The Bermuda College is a different scene," she said. "I am not doing a degree course, I am doing something that people will love.

"When the Farmer's Market is up and running again we will take people there to get stuff and take it back to the kitchen.

"We were having the Farmer's Market in Hamilton on Saturdays but it became too hot. Then we wanted to start it again in Paget but there is nothing growing right now. But it should be operating again in October."