By SOPHIE BATES

FLOWOOD, Miss. (AP) — They’re both round, orange and probably bad for your health, but which is the better Thanksgiving dessert: pumpkin or sweet potato pie? For most people, the answer likely depends on where they’re from.

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The two Thanksgiving favorites have more in common than not. They’re similar in color, taste and texture, and derived from European carrot pie. Those similarities make them all the easier to compare.

“Pumpkin,” said Lori Robinson, a customer at Sugar Magnolia Takery in Flowood, Mississippi. “My mom cooks it every Thanksgiving, Christmas, every time. It’s way better than sweet potato.”

Unlike some bakeries in the area, Sugar Magonlia Takery makes both pumpkin and sweet potato pies.

Owner Elizabeth Arnold said the main difference between the pies in her bakery comes down to spice. Sweet potato is sweeter, made with white and brown sugar. Pumpkin pie is less sweet and spicier.

“Sweet potato pie. All day,” said Xavier Pittman, another customer.

At Arnold’s bakery, sweet potato tends to outsell pumpkin.

That’s not surprising in a southern bakery, explained Adrian Miller, a culinary author known as the “Soul Food Scholar.”

A mixer combines the ingredients for sweet potato pie on Friday, Nov. 21, 2025, in Flowood, Mississippi. (AP Photo/Sophie Bates)

Sweet potato pie, he said, is particularly popular in the South, where sweet potatoes have deep roots in the region’s culture, economy and painful past.

“If there were to be a Mount Rushmore of soul food desserts, sweet potato pie would definitely be there,” Miller said.

Pumpkin pie, while ubiquitous, is more often associated with the northern part of the country.

The stereotypes boil down to this: Pumpkin pie is favored by white northerners while sweet potato pie is a favorite among Black southerners. But for culinary historian and author Michael W. Twitty, the issue is more nuanced.

With both desserts ingrained in American history, tradition and culture, the debate over which is better, Twitty argues, is really about identity.

“We can have fun with good-natured ribbing between regions and cultures,” Twitty said. “At the same time, don’t let it get too serious to the point where it’s like hard, fast markers of who you are, who I am, who we are.”

Raised in Washington, D.C., Twitty didn’t grow up in the Deep South. But the South, he said, has grown up in him. His family’s southern roots stretch back to the 17th century.

“Everybody would always bring like two homemade sweet potato pies,” Twitty said of his childhood Thanksgivings.

The intertwining of sweet potatoes and southern Black culture began with slavery. Sweet potatoes were a staple for many enslaved people in the Americas, Twitty said. It was an accessible, familiar food, similar to the yams and cassava that make up a cornerstone of African cuisine.

Enslaved people are credited with perfecting the sweet potato pie recipe, though Europeans are thought to be the first to attempt such a delicacy.

Some believe slavery is the reason sweet potato pie didn’t take off in the North. An abolitionist movement advocated boycotting goods produced by enslaved people but, Twitty said, the answer is likely simpler: access.

Sweet potatoes and pumpkins were both available in the South. In the North, however, early Americans didn’t have much access to the orange sweet potatoes we think of today, Miller said. Instead, northern sweet potatoes had white flesh and a more mealy texture.

Pies, fresh out of the oven, cool on a baking rack on Friday, Nov. 21, 2025, in Flowood, Miss. (AP Photo/Sophie Bates)

With limited access to sweet potatoes in the North, pumpkin likely reigned supreme. The tradition of pumpkin pie goes back centuries to the colonial period, Miller said. A recipe for pumpkin pie was included in the nation’s first cookbook, written in 1796 by Amelia Simmons.

While there may be some truth to the culinary divide, Twitty said the stereotypes don’t hold up in many communities. Miller, who also has southern ancestry, said he grew up eating pumpkin and sweet potato pie on Thanksgiving.

“There will also be somebody, every single day, every single year who will break the rules,” Twitty said.

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. consumers were much less confident in the economy in November in the aftermath of the government shutdown, weak hiring and stubborn inflation.

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The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index dropped to 88.7 in November from an upwardly revised October reading of 95.5, the lowest reading since April, when President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs that caused the stock market to plunge.

The figures suggest that Americans are increasingly wary of high costs and sluggish job gains, with perceptions of the labor market worsening, the survey found. Declining confidence could pose political problems for Trump and Republicans in Congress, as the dimmer views of the economy were seen among all political affiliations and were particularly sharp among independents, the Conference Board said.

Earlier Tuesday, a government report showed that retail sales slowed in September after healthy readings over the summer. While economists forecast healthy growth for the July-September quarter, many expect a much weaker showing in the final three months of the year, largely because of the shutdown.

Less-confident consumers may spend less, though the connection isn’t always clear. In recent years, consumer spending has held up even when the available data suggests they’ve grown more anxious.

“We do not think that consumer spending is about to hit a cliff, as spending has decoupled from confidence, but risks to the downside are increasing,” Thomas Simons, chief U.S. economist at Jefferies, an investment bank, said.

The proportion of consumers that said jobs are “plentiful” dropped to 27.6% in November, down from 28.6% in the previous month. It is down sharply from 37% in December.

At the same time, 17.9% said jobs are “hard to get,” slightly below the 18.3% who said so in October. That figure is up from 15.2% in September. The figures on job availability are seen by economists as reliable predictors of hiring and the unemployment rate.

Americans continue to worry about elevated costs, fueling the “affordability” concerns that were a key issue in elections earlier this month.

“Consumers’ write-in responses pertaining to factors affecting the economy continued to be led by references to prices and inflation, tariffs and trade, and politics, with increased mentions of the federal government shutdown,” said Dana Peterson, chief economist at the Conference Board. The shutdown ended Nov. 12.

The economy likely grew at a solid annual rate of about 3% in the July-September quarter, economists estimate. But growth is likely to slow in the final three months of the year, largely because of the shutdown, which cut off pay for federal workers, disrupted contracts, and interrupted air travel.

The Conference Board survey ran through Nov. 18, about five days after the shutdown ended.

Minnesota State Parks and Washington County Parks are encouraging visitors to spend time outdoors during the holiday weekend by offering free entry on Friday.

Free entry applies to all 10 Washington County parks and regional trails. The parks offer hiking, horse trails, mountain biking and, when the snow flies, cross-country skiing. For more information about the parks, visit WashingtonCountyMN.gov/Parks

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is waiving vehicle fees to all 73 of its state parks. Some parks are offering free events, including a naturalist-led hike at Wild River State Park about 50 miles north of St. Paul. Find more information at dnr.state.mn.us.

Dakota County Parks and Ramsey County Parks do not require vehicle permits.

Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is traditionally a busy day for shopping: More than 500,000 people visited the Mall of America from Nov. 27 to Dec. 1 last year, according to the MOA website. About 13,000 people visited the Mall of America within the first hour of opening on Black Friday last year.

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By DAVID KLEPPER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Hackers working for Russian intelligence attacked an American engineering company this fall, investigators at a U.S. cybersecurity company said Tuesday — seemingly because that firm had worked for a U.S. municipality with a sister city in Ukraine.

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The findings reflect the evolving tools and tactics of Russia’s cyber war and demonstrate Moscow’s willingness to attack a growing list of targets, including governments, organizations and private companies that have supported Ukraine, even in a tenuous way.

Arctic Wolf, the U.S. cybersecurity firm that identified the Russian campaign, wouldn’t identify its customer or the city it worked with to protect their security, but said the company had no direct connection to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. However, the group behind the attack, known to cybersecurity experts as RomCom, has consistently targeted groups with links to Ukraine and its defense against Russia.

“They routinely go after organizations that support Ukrainian institutions directly, provide services to Ukrainian municipalities, and assist organizations tied to Ukrainian civil society, defense, or government functions,” said Ismael Valenzuela, Arctic Wolf’s vice president of labs, threat research and intelligence.

The attack on the engineering firm was identified by Arctic Wolf in September before it could disrupt the engineering company’s operations or spread further.

A message left with officials at the Russian Embassy in Washington seeking comment was not immediately returned.

Many towns and cities around the world enjoy sister-city relationships with other communities, using the program to offer social and economic exchanges. Several U.S. cities, including Chicago, Baltimore, Albany, N.Y. and Cincinnati, have sister-city relationships with communities in Ukraine.

The campaign in September came just a few weeks after the FBI warned that hackers linked to Russia were seeking to break into U.S. networks as a way to burrow into important systems or disrupt critical infrastructure. According to the latest bulletin from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the Russia-aligned hackers have multiple motives: disrupting aid and military supplies to Ukraine, punishing businesses with ties to Ukraine, or stealing military or technical secrets.

Last month, the Digital Security Lab of Ukraine and investigators at SentinelOne, a U.S. cybersecurity firm, exposed a speedy and sprawling cyberattack on relief groups supporting Ukraine, including the International Red Cross and UNICEF. That hacking campaign used fake emails impersonating Ukrainian officials that sought to fool users into infecting their own computers by clicking on malicious links.

The investigators at SentinelOne stopped short of attributing the attack to the Russian government but noted that the operation targeted groups working on Ukrainian assistance and required six months to plan. The “highly capable adversary” behind the campaign, the investigators determined, is “an operator well-versed in both offensive tradecraft and defensive detection evasion.”