Culinary instructor learned ropes in Aberdeen tea room
Jan. 18—AMORY — When Susan Langford and her mother, Sara Gardner, opened the Cottage Tea Room in Aberdeen in 1998, neither one knew anything about running a restaurant.
"When my mother retired from nursing, she didn't want to stay at home," Langford said. "We started looking at catering equipment and instead bought the house where it was stored. Six months later, we opened the Cottage Tea Room with no restaurant experience whatsoever."
The two ladies opened the doors with five items on the menu: quiche; soup; sweep of the kitchen, which was an entree, salad and fruit; a chicken salad plate; and a grilled chicken salad plate.
"We soon realized we needed to add more items," said Langford, 59. "When we closed, we had more than 50 items on the menu. The first item we sold at the restaurant as a special was our Chicken and Wild Rice Casserole. I could have sold that every day, it was so popular."
The duo closed the restaurant in May 2021 because Gardner was finally ready to retire, and Langford didn't want to run the business without her.
By then, though, the food business was in Langford's blood. Three months after she shut the tea room down, Langford went to work as the culinary instructor at the Amory Career and Technical Center. She teaches two Culinary 1 classes each day along with one Culinary 2 class.
"I felt like I'd been a teacher when I started here because I was raising and teaching the kids who worked for me at the tea room," she said.
Langford said she tries to show her students old tricks, like how to crank a cookie press, what a stiff meringue looks like, the difference between blending and beating ingredients.
"Some of the students are learning to cook to survive, some take it because they enjoy cooking, and some want to have a culinary career," she said.
Langford was born and raised in Aberdeen, the oldest of three children. She didn't spend much time cooking while she was growing up, but rather learned out of necessity when she married.
"Then, I didn't have a choice," she said. "I had to cook."
When she first started preparing meals, she'd cook for a crowd, even though it was just her and her husband, Mike, at home.
"I have a hard time making small amounts," she said. "I'd cook huge portions for the two of us, and then we'd eat on it for three or four days. Now that it's just the two of us again, we eat out a lot."
Langford still likes to try new recipes, and she's not afraid of long lists or strange ingredients.
"If I see something I like, I'm going to try it," she said. "I'm not going to let something get beat me. I'm going to do it until I master it."
The exception to that rule is homemade gravy.
"Gravy is the only thing I haven't mastered," she said. "I could throw it against the wall today, and it would still be hanging there tomorrow."
DO YOU KNOW A GOOD COOK? Send your nominations to Ginna Parsons, Cook of the Week, P.O. Box 909, Tupelo, MS 38802. Or you can call (662) 678-1581 or email them to ginna.parsons@journalinc.com.
CHICKEN AND WILD RICE CASSEROLE
1 box Uncle Ben's Long Grain & Wild Rice
3 cups cooked, diced chicken
1 can cream of celery soup
1 (2-ounce) jar chopped pimientos
1 can French-cut green beans, drained
1 cup mayonnaise
Prepare wild rice according to package directions. Combine cooked rice with remaining ingredients and place in a greased casserole. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes.
CORNBREAD SALAD
2 boxes Jiffy cornbread mix
1/2 cup diced jalapeños from a jar
1 can whole kernel corn, drained
5 green onions, chopped
10 slices bacon, cooked and chopped
15 cherry tomatoes, quartered
2 cups mayonnaise
Prepare cornbread mixes according to package directions. When cool, crumble cornbread in a large bowl. Add remaining ingredients and mix well. Chill. Serve with crackers, or as a salad plate along with chicken salad and pasta salad.
CREAM CHEESE POUND CAKE
3 cups sugar
3 sticks margarine, softened
6 eggs
1 (8-ounce) block cream cheese, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
Cream sugar, margarine, eggs, cream cheese and vanilla until smooth. Add flour and salt and mix well.
Pour batter into a greased and floured Bundt pan. Place in a cold oven and bake at 300 degrees for 1 1/2 hours.
SHAKE, RATTLE AND RO-TEL SOUP
1 1/2 pounds ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped, or 1/4 cup dehydrated onions
2 cans minestrone soup
2 cans water
1 can Ro-tel tomatoes
1 can baby lima beans
Brown ground beef; drain. Return ground beef to pot and add remaining ingredients. Cook for 1 hour. Serve with cornbread.
SWEET POTATO PIE
2 sweet potatoes
1 stick margarine, melted
3 eggs
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 unbaked pie shell
Peel, dice and cook sweet potatoes. Mash potatoes and add margarine, eggs and sweetened condensed milk. Pour mixture into unbaked pie shell. Bake at 350 degrees until firm, about 35 minutes.
CHEESE STRAWS
2 (5-ounce) jars Old English Cheese Spread
2 sticks margarine, softened
1 1/2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
2 cups all-purpose flour
Combine cheese and margarine until smooth. Add cayenne pepper and mix well. Add flour, 1 cup at a time, and mix well.
Place dough in a cookie press and press out rolls of dough. Cut in 1 1/2-inch pieces and place on a cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes or until lightly browned.
