Clare Osdene Schapiro

Jan 9, 2025 | smithmountainlake.com | Clare Osdene Schapiro

It’s a precious lifelong companion whose acquaintance I first made in my school’s elegant dining room in Richmond in the late 1960s. It was certainly nothing ever served by my English mother in our dining room. I took a look. Very unprepossessing, I thought, but all it took was one bite, and I was bewitched.  “What is this?” I asked my bemused friends, who laughed at my seeming naivete. “It’s lemon chess pie, of course! Where have you been?” Well, clearly not in a proper Virginia kitchen.

Oct 11, 2024 | smithmountainlake.com | Clare Osdene Schapiro

Considering that the father of his country, none other than George Washington, grew sweet potatoes, it’s safe to say they have been an important crop in Virginia practically forever. And while the earliest cultivation records of the sweet potato date to the mid-ninth century in Peru, it’s known that Christopher Columbus found them when he came ashore in the new world six centuries later. It's documented that they were grown in Virginia as early as 1648. So what’s there to love about a sweet potato?

Jul 30, 2022 | virginialiving.com | Clare Osdene Schapiro

Jun 11, 2022 | virginialiving.com | Clare Osdene Schapiro

May 7, 2022 | enformeva.com | Clare Osdene Schapiro