By STACEY MEI YAN FONG

Every time I am feeling a little too much, or sometimes not enough, I bake a pie. I bake a pie when I celebrate something, make a new friend, figure out something hard, go on an inspiring trip, and, most of all, when I am trying to create a feeling of home.

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For my project-turned-cookbook, “50 Pies, 50 States,” I decided to learn about America by creating a pie for each state that said something about its people and included meaningful regional ingredients.

For pumpkin pie, one state stood out: Illinois. About 85% of canned pumpkin consumed in the United States comes from Illinois, and pumpkin pie is the official state pie.

But I couldn’t just make a regular ol’ pumpkin pie! I had to think outside the box. Then it hit me: I could make the love child of a pumpkin pie and a deep-dish pizza, which is thick and baked in a skillet and requires a fork and knife to eat ’cause it’s too dang hard to pick up! Like one of Chicago’s skyscrapers, this deep-dish pumpkin pie was an engineering feat.

The deep-dish crust is the hardest part of this recipe. I always egg-wash the crust. For the egg wash, I combine one whole large egg, one large yolk, and 2 tablespoons milk or water (whichever you have on hand) in a quart container, and blend with an immersion blender or whisk until smooth. This has been the recipe that has given me the best golden brown on my bakes. Don’t be stressed, chill your dough and take your time! Pro Tip: Make your filling a day in advance; this will help guarantee a thicker set custard filling.

Deep-Dish Pumpkin Pie

Makes one 9-inch pie

Start to finish: 6 hours (1 hour active)

Ingredients

CRUST

Store-bought or homemade pie dough (preferably made with all butter; and enough for a double crusted pie); do not separate into two portions.

Egg wash

—-

PUMPKIN FILLING

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup packed light brown sugar

2 tablespoons cornstarch

2 teaspoons ground ginger

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

2 (15-ounce) cans pumpkin puree (I prefer Libby’s)

2-1/2 cups heavy cream

6 large eggs, beaten

—-

SPECIAL EQUIPMENT

9-inch springform pan that is at least 2-1/2inches deep

Parchment paper

Directions

MAKE THE FILLING: In a medium bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients: sugars, cornstarch, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, salt and pepper. In a separate medium bowl, mix the pumpkin, cream and eggs together until well incorporated. Mix in the dry ingredients and make sure everything is well incorporated. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours, or up to overnight.

BLIND BAKE THE CRUST: Preheat the oven to 425°F. Roll out the double portion of dough so that there will be at least a 1-inch overhang beyond the edge of the springform pan. Spray the 9-inch springform pan liberally with nonstick cooking spray. Line the bottom with parchment paper. Fit the rolled-out crust in the pan, making sure to push the dough into all corners on the bottom and that all the sides are covered. Leave about an inch of dough hanging over the edge of the pan. Freeze for one hour. Prick the dough with a fork on the base and sides. Line the entire crust with foil, making sure it is tight around the edges. Fill to the brim with pie weights or beans. Bake for 30 minutes, until the crust is lightly golden at the edges. Let the crust cool completely with the weights still in the crust; it may take 2 to 3 hours to cool completely.

FILL AND BAKE THE PIE: Preheat the oven to 400°F. Remove the foil and weights from the baked crust and brush the entire crust with egg wash to seal. Keep the crust in the springform pan. Place it on a baking sheet and fill with the chilled pumpkin filling. Bake the pie on the center rack, rotating the baking sheet 90 degrees every 15 minutes to make sure the filling is cooking evenly, for 45 to 50 minutes, until the center has a slight jiggle but is mostly set. Check the edge of the crust at 30 minutes; if it is getting too brown, tent with foil. Let the pie cool for at least four hours before removing from the springform pan. Serve with whipped cream if desired. Best enjoyed while watching “The Last Dance” documentary series about Michael Jordan and the 1997 Chicago Bulls.

Adapted from “50 Pies, 50 States,” by Stacey Mei Yan Fong. Copyright (copyright) 2024 by Stacey Mei Yan Fong. Used with permission of Voracious, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. New York, NY. All rights reserved.

By Tan Vinh, The Seattle Times

SEATTLE — Teriyaki chicken is a quick and cheap lunch that’s synonymous with Seattle. One acclaimed local chef, Taichi Kitamura of Eastlake’s Sushi Kappo Tamura, makes a compelling case for elevating that humble poultry dish into a fancy Thanksgiving feast.

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Teriyaki chicken is only made with dark meat. That rule also applies to turkey teriyaki, since the breast meat will dry out, the chef said. Kitamura offered us a pan-fried turkey breast recipe, too, with a sake-and-butter sauce. He typically fries the turkey breast while the rest of the meat roasts in the oven.

All told, the entire turkey was cooked and ready to be eaten in less than an hour.

We asked for both recipes and printed them below. Enjoy!

Thanksgiving turkey teriyaki

Ingredients

2 turkey thighs, deboned
2 turkey wings
2 cups soy sauce
2 cups sake
1 1/4 cups sugar
2 cups water
2 cups hot water
1/3 cup of whiskey (optional)

Steps

1. Break down the turkey by chopping it down the middle, cutting off the hindquarters (thighs and drumsticks) and separating the thighs from the drumsticks.

2. Turn the bird over and cut off the breast from the rib cage and then chop the wings that are attached to the breasts. (A turkey has the same anatomy as a chicken, so if you’re more of a visual learner, head to YouTube for step-by-step instructions on breaking down a bird.)

3. Then comes the deboning. Detach the bone by trimming the edge of the meat where it meets the bone. The rest is less labor-intensive. (No need to debone the wings, since they cook faster.)

4. Score the meat with the tip of the knife.

5. For the marinade: In a large mixing bowl, add the hot water and sugar; whisk until all the sugar is dissolved.

6. Add soy sauce, sake, whiskey and water. Let the teriyaki sauce cool before marinating the meat.

7. Marinate the turkey for 12-16 hours in fridge.

8. On Thanksgiving Day, remove the turkey from the marinade. Towel it dry.

9. Lay the meat on a flat rack/grid over a pan, skin side up. A rack or grid over the pan helps keep the turkey from getting soggy from all the fat drippings. The rack helps crisp up the skin, too.

10. Roast the turkey in an oven (preferably a convection oven) preheated to 475 degrees until the temperature of the thickest part of the meat reaches 165 degrees. If using a conventional oven, heat the oven to 450 degrees.

11. Depending on the size of your turkey and your oven, you may need to use two trays or cook in batches.

12. Cut into 3/4-inch slices and serve.

Pan-fried turkey breast

Ingredients

2 turkey breasts, deboned
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 stick of butter, cut into 8 pieces
1 1/4 cups sake
1/2 cup soy sauce
Salt and black pepper to taste
3 bay leaves
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Steps

1. Butterfly the breast meat to an even width of about an inch thick or less.

2. Score the skin with the tip of the knife.

3. Season with salt and pepper.

4. In a large frying pan or skillet, heat vegetable oil.

5. Place the turkey skin side down on medium-high heat, cooking until the skin is golden-brown.

6. The turkey will be too large to cook on one skillet, so cook each breast separately or use two skillets.

7. Turn the turkey and cook the meat until the internal temperature reaches 165 degrees. Remove from the pan.

8. Deglaze the pan with sake. Add the bay leaves, soy sauce, lemon juice and butter. Add the juice from the cooked turkey if there is any. Stir vigorously with a spoon to emulsify.

9. Cut the turkey into 3/4-inch strips. Place on a platter.

10. Pour the sauce over the turkey and serve.

©2025 The Seattle Times. Visit seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By SHELBY LUM and LAURAN NEERGAARD

A doctor advising … sleepaway camp? That’s how a 12-year-old diagnosed with lupus found himself laughing on a high-ropes course as fellow campers hoisted him into the air.

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“It’s really fun,” said Dylan Aristy Mota, thrilled that he got a chance at the rite of childhood — thanks to doctors reassuring his mom that they’d be at this upstate New York camp, too. Dylan felt good knowing if “anything else pops up, they can catch it faster than if we had to wait til we got home.”

It may sound surprising but diseases like lupus, myositis and some forms of arthritis — when your immune system attacks your body instead of protecting it — don’t just strike adults. With the exception of Type 1 diabetes, these autoimmune diseases are more rare in kids but they do happen.

People often ask, “Can kids have arthritis? Can kids have lupus?” said Dr. Natalia Vasquez-Canizares, a pediatric rheumatologist at Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, which partnered with Frost Valley YMCA last summer so some of those youngsters could try a traditional sleepaway camp despite a strict medicine schedule and nervous parents.

“Imagine for an adult, it’s difficult. If you have that disease since you’re young, it’s very difficult to, you know, cope with,” she said.

Special challenges for kids

The younger that someone is when certain illnesses hit, especially before puberty, the more severe symptoms may be. And while genes can make people of any age more vulnerable to autoimmune conditions, usually it takes other factors that stress the immune system, such as infections, to cause the disease to develop.

Dr. Natalia Vasquez-Canizares, right, examines Ethan Blanchfield-Killeen, 11, of Yonkers, N.Y., who has a form of juvenile idiopathic arthritis, at the Frost Valley YMCA sleepaway camp in Claryville, N.Y., Thursday, July 31, 2025. The camp partnered with Children’s Hospital at Montefiore so kids with autoimmune diseases could attend for the first time. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

But genes are more to blame when disease strikes early in life, said Dr. Laura Lewandowski of the National Institutes of Health who helps lead international research into genetic changes that fuel childhood lupus.

Symptoms among children can be sneaky and hard to pinpoint. Rather than expressing joint pain, a very young child might walk with a limp or regress to crawling, Vasquez-Canizares said.

“Before, I looked like everybody else, like normal,” Dylan said. Then, “my face turned like the bright pink, and it started to like get more and more red.”

His family thought it must be allergies, and Dylan recalled many doctor appointments before being diagnosed with lupus last January.

Treatment has unique challenges, too. Medicines that tamp down symptoms do so by suppressing young immune systems — just as they’re learning to fend off germs. They can also can affect whether kids build strong bones.

Research underway to help kids

But there are promising treatments in development. Seattle Children’s Hospital recently opened the first clinical trial of what’s called CAR-T therapy for pediatric lupus. Those “living drugs” are made by reprogramming some of patients’ own immune soldiers, T cells, to find and kill another type, B cells, that can run amok. Tests in adults with lupus and a growing list of other autoimmune diseases are showing early promise, putting some people in long-term, drug-free remission.

Ethan Blanchfield-Killeen, 11, center right, of Yonkers, N.Y., who has a form of juvenile idiopathic arthritis, plays a game of paint tag at the Frost Valley YMCA sleepaway camp in Claryville, N.Y., Wednesday, July 30, 2025. The camp partnered with Children’s Hospital at Montefiore so kids with autoimmune diseases could attend for the first time. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

And occasionally a mother’s autoimmune disease can harm her child, such as a rare fetal heart defect that requires a lifelong pacemaker if the baby survives. Dr. Jill Buyon at NYU Langone Health is studying how to block that defect — and just reported a healthy girl born to a mom with mild lupus.

“This is a rare example where we know the exact point in time at which this is going to happen,” allowing a chance at prevention, said Dr. Philip Carlucci, an NYU rheumatology fellow and study co-author.

What happens: A kind of antibody, found in lupus, Sjögren’s and certain other autoimmune diseases, can damage the heart’s ability to beat properly if enough crosses the placenta during key cardiac development. Some treatments can lower but not eliminate the risk. Buyon’s team is testing if a drug used to treat a different autoimmune disease could better shield the fetus.

Kelsey Kim jumped at the experimental treatment in her last pregnancy, “partly in the hopes of saving my own baby and partly in the hopes of saving other people’s babies and saving them from the pain that I had experienced.”

Dylan Aristy Mota, 12, of New York City, who has lupus, is hoisted in the air by fellow campers during an activity at the Frost Valley YMCA sleepaway camp in Claryville, N.Y., Wednesday, July 30, 2025. The camp partnered with Children’s Hospital at Montefiore so kids with autoimmune diseases could attend for the first time. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Her first daughter was born healthy although doctors didn’t mention the baby’s temporary lupus-related rash was a warning that future pregnancies might be at risk. Kim then lost a son to congenital heart block at 22 weeks of pregnancy. Her second daughter’s heart sustained milder damage, and she’s now a thriving 2-year-old thanks to a pacemaker.

A third daughter was born healthy in June after Kim got the experimental drug in weekly visits, spanning about three months, to NYU from her northern Virginia home. A single case isn’t proof, and Buyon has NIH funding to start a clinical trial for other high-risk pregnancies soon.

Helping kids be kids

Back at the New York sleepaway camp, the goal was some normalcy for kids ruled by strict medication schedules that can make it difficult to be away from family.

Dylan Aristy Mota, 12, of New York City, who has lupus, walks out of the water doing an evening swim at the Frost Valley YMCA sleepaway camp in Claryville, N.Y., Wednesday, July 30, 2025. The camp partnered with Children’s Hospital at Montefiore so kids with autoimmune diseases could attend for the first time. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

“I do kind of get to forget about it,” Ethan Blanchfield-Killeen, 11, said of the form of juvenile idiopathic arthritis — similar to rheumatoid arthritis in adults — that can leave his joints stiff and achy.

One day a doctor examined his hands at camp. Another day, he was running across the lawn splattered in a fierce game of paint tag.

“Just seeing them in a different perspective” than the sterile doctor’s office “almost brings tears to my eyes,” said Vasquez-Canizares, the Montefiore rheumatologist.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By Stephen Kates, CFP, Bankrate.com

No risk, no return!

How many times have you heard that phrase or something similar?

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It’s usually meant to encourage. A rallying cry for entrepreneurship, industry and capitalism, it also alludes to the inverse — that high risk translates into high return. But when it comes to investing, it isn’t quite so simple.

Risk vs. return in investing

While risk and potential return can be intimately related, it’s not a one-to-one relationship, which is why managing risk in an investment portfolio is one of — if not the most — critical aspects of investing.

It is entirely possible to take huge risks and have no reasonable expectation of an outsize return. This might be most closely associated with gambling. If all you’re doing is betting big and hoping for a payoff, the value of your risk is entirely dependent on the outcome. A positive result affirms the risk was worth it, even if the logic of the bet wasn’t sound, and vice versa.

Certain types of systemic risk are, by their nature, hard to anticipate and harder to avoid. The COVID-19 pandemic was one such example. If we could foresee these risks, plan for them and hedge them, they wouldn’t really be risks at all. In investing, we plan for and manage those risks through diversification and asset allocation.

The 3 types of risk

Prudent portfolio management should take into account a careful consideration of three key measures of risk.

Risk tolerance is your willingness to accept risk of loss and can be felt as an emotional measure of the amount of pain or stress you can withstand as an investor.

Risk exposure is the amount of risk your portfolio is actually exposed to based on the investments you hold.

Risk capacity is your financial ability to withstand both acute and long-lasting losses within your portfolio. Put another way, this is a measurement of your financial fragility.

Risk tolerance

It is hard to test one’s risk tolerance outside of a real-world situation that impacts your finances. Backtests and mock trading strategies can’t duplicate the real experience of gaining or losing money in the market. Inexperienced investors often overestimate their risk tolerance, resulting in panic if it all goes wrong. It can be better to learn those lessons early, when you have only a little money at stake, instead of later in life when you’re more likely to be managing larger sums.

Another complicating factor with measuring risk tolerance is the fact that one’s risk tolerance can evolve over time. This is normal but it does mean that your portfolio needs to adapt to your relative comfort with risk. Some investors may become more comfortable with risk as they become better investors, while others may become more conservative as they approach retirement or feel the weight of potential losses.

Similar to Ernest Hemingway’s famous quote about bankruptcy, anxiety over your risk of losses can happen slowly, and then all at once. Market volatility can arise swiftly and catch investors off guard. As seen in the graph above, investors enjoyed a relatively tame period between 2012 and 2020. In 2020, as the pandemic hit, volatility exploded, taking many investors by surprise.

If you only pay attention to your portfolio risk after witnessing substantial losses, it is too late to make the right changes. These kinds of surprises may leave you anxious and prone to emotional decision-making. Being forced to make financial decisions under duress is a recipe for regret.

Risk capacity

Awareness of your relative financial stability is key to judging your real risk capacity. Conducting a risk assessment and creating a financial plan is one of the most thorough ways to assess your financial weak points. Analyzing your cash flow, emergency fund, goal progression and income needs can shed light on how much wiggle room you might have if your finances or portfolio deteriorate by a certain amount.

For instance, if paying for your essential expenses, such as your groceries and mortgage, requires both spouses’ incomes, then you are more susceptible to financial hardship if one person loses their job than someone who can cover those expenses on a single income. Neither income arrangement is right or wrong; it simply informs how you should manage your risk exposure and cash safety net.

Risk exposure

Exposure cuts both ways. Ratcheting up the risk exposure through higher allocations to stocks, cryptocurrency or options can increase a portfolio’s potential returns — but also its potential losses. Over a given period of time, riskier investments don’t always translate risk into opportunity or behave in easy-to-understand ways.

An investor with multiple sources of income, a robust emergency fund and dry powder on the sidelines can withstand risk exposure better than an investor who lives paycheck to paycheck and has no safety net due to market or income losses.

Measuring risk should be done using various methods, including average rate of return, beta, Sharpe ratio, standard deviation and maximum drawdown expectations. A basic understanding of these measures is useful for the average investor, but vital for self-directed investors who are pushing the envelope with risk.

Statistical measures of risk

—Beta (β)

This evaluates the volatility of a single security or fund when compared to the market as a whole or its respective benchmark. A stock with a beta of 1 has the same volatility as the benchmark, while a beta of 2 is twice as volatile as the benchmark.

—Sharpe ratio

This formula is used to compare the historical return of an investment with its past volatility to determine whether excess returns are a result of risk or investment skill.

—Standard deviation

This measures the variation around the stock’s average return. A high standard deviation means an investment has high variability and may experience a wide range of possible returns over a given period of time.

—Maximum drawdown

This is the largest drop in value an investment may experience from its highest to lowest point over a given period of time, based on historical records. As the saying goes, past performance is no indication of future results, and no single investment can be predicted. A word of caution: Drawdown measurements are backward looking and do not predict how much an asset can fall in the future. The more diversified the asset, the more consistent this measurement may be. For instance, the historical performance of a single stock offers less useful information than the historical performance of an entire index.

Aligning the 3 measures of risk in your portfolio

However you decide to measure and manage risk, it is critical that you align your risk exposure to your tolerance and capacity for risk. It can be tempting and easy to let your risk exposure drift higher as the market rallies over multiple years, but when corrections or bear markets do come, you don’t want to be left watching your gains evaporate.

Ideally, all of these measures will align. However, this is usually rare.

There are many reasons that your risk tolerance might be more or less than your financial capacity for risk. Aligning your risk exposure properly should be a compromise between your risk tolerance and your risk capacity. The portfolio that suits you best should be dictated by the lesser of these two measures.

A key marker of a well-designed strategy should be the ability to remain invested through various market environments. A comprehensive financial plan will account for good and bad years. It is possible to be an above-average investor by simply achieving average returns for an above-average length of time.

While historical charts of indices such as the S&P 500 reveal down years, the majority of years not only have a positive return and some show double-digit percentage growth. Participating is the critical part, because if you can weather the bad years, you can enjoy the good ones.

©2025 Bankrate.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.