DawnWatch DC

DawnWatch DC: Sticky Fingers in the Washington Times 7/20/07

Fri, 20 Jul 2007 20:42:00 GMT

Hey all you Sticky Fingers fans in DC:
Here is an excuse for you to rave publicly about Sticky Fingers and the joys of being vegan. Please use it!
The Washington Times takes letters at http://video1.washingtontimes.com/contact-us/contact_us.php

The Washington Times
July 20, 2007 Friday

Vegan bakery makes do without;
Pastries sans dairy products just as tasty as traditional sweets

By Adam Terese, THE WASHINGTON TIMES
BUSINESS; ON THE JOB; C08

Head baker and sometimes decorator Jenny Webb likes being surrounded by cakes and sweets all day and she is not above sampling her work.

"I still like to eat the product I make," says Ms. Webb, 30, of Silver Spring. "I just don't get to do it too frequently."

Ms. Webb, who works at Sticky Fingers Bakery in the District, does many jobs at the shop, whose products are entirely vegan.

Decorating, though, is Ms. Webb's favorite part of the cake-making process.

After nine months of training at L'Academie de Cuisine, a pastry school in Gaithersburg, Ms. Webb has worked in baking and decorating since she graduated in summer 2003.

"I liked sculpture and ceramics in school," she says. "I kind of thought of it like a sculpture."

Sticky Fingers is a vegan bakery, meaning it uses no animal products. The baking is different because vegan ingredients react differently than animal products, says Doron Petersan, 34, co-owner of the bakery.

"The way we mix things is how we can alleviate not using dairy," she says.

Ms. Webb, who is not formally trained as a vegan baker and is not a vegan, says the vegan-only ingredients make it harder to experiment with new cake flavors. The bakery tried out a lemon pound cake, but eventually decided it was not up to taste standards, she says.

Ms. Webb's day begins at around 7 or 8 a.m., usually with baking. While the store's entire staff totals 18, including the deli and coffee staff, only three persons make the sweets. So Ms. Webb often fills in when help is needed.

In fact, teamwork plays a big part in creating and decorating cakes at Sticky Fingers Bakery, she says.

The cake process begins with making the batter. Although some special vegan ingredients are needed, the batter is mostly just "regular cake stuff," says Betsy Hallstrom, 25 from the District, who on this day is baking the cakes. She says the process takes about 30 minutes.

"This is what makes us different from other bakeries - the egg replacer," she says, as she pours the liquid substance into vanilla cake batter. Egg replacer, she explains, is a leavening agent that substitutes for regular eggs. The bakery also uses non-dairy, non-hydrogenated margarine.

Once the batter is finished, it is scooped into oiled and floured cake pans - one batch of batter makes about three 9-inch cakes, three 6-inch cakes and two dozen cupcakes - and put in the oven for 15 to 25 minutes. After cooling, some of the cakes go to Ms. Webb for decorating.

"Pretty much whatever you could think of, you can get on a cake," Ms. Webb says.

While about six cakes were created this day, that number can get as high as 20 on weekends.

Frosting can be a challenge, especially when it is not at room temperature, Ms. Webb says. But the occasional decorating mistake can often be corrected without starting over, she adds.

"I don't find it challenging though because I like doing it," she says.

Last week, Ms. Webb was decorating what the store calls a Cookies N' Cake, which she says is "like a cookies n' cream cake." The chocolate cake is stacked three layers high with a mix of vegan vanilla buttercream frosting and chocolate cake pieces between each layer. She then smoothes the frosting over the entire cake with an offset spatula, making sure there are no blemishes.

To finish, she squeezes dollops of vanilla frosting along the top and bottom edges of the circular cake. She places fourths of an Oreolike cookie on each dollop, adding an appealing and tasty touch. The kitchen-made vanilla frosting comes from 18-quart containers.

"Now I have this pretty thing sitting here," Ms. Webb says. "It's kind of like art, but I don't take it really seriously."
(End of Washington Times article)
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Date: Fri Jul 20 14:42:04 2007

DawnWatch DC -- "Ringling Circus Hired Private Eye To Infiltrate PETA" -- 2/28/06

Tue, 28 Feb 2006 19:45:00 GMT

The following Washington Post article gives us a great opportunity for letters to the editor in favor of circuses that do not use animals. The Washington Post takes letters at letters@washpost.com and advises, "Letters must be exclusive to The Washington Post, and must include the writer's home address and home and business telephone numbers."

Here is the article:

The Washington Post
February 28, 2006 Tuesday
Metro; B01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/27/AR2006022701436.html

Ringling Circus Hired Private Eye To Infiltrate PETA, Fairfax Jury Told

Tom Jackman, Washington Post Staff Writer

The Ringling Bros. circus infiltrated animal rights groups, stole sensitive internal documents and illegally wiretapped circus opponents as part of a national conspiracy to disrupt animal rights groups, a lawyer told a Fairfax County jury yesterday.

The allegations by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals launched a trial five years in the making. It also culminates a lengthy legal battle between PETA and Kenneth Feld, whose family has owned the circus for nearly 40 years.

During opening statements, PETA accused Feld of overseeing the espionage campaign against it and other animal rights organizations. Feld's attorney responded that infiltrating groups is not a crime, that PETA was not harmed by any alleged action by Feld or his employees and that Feld did not know of the operation or do anything illegal. Monitoring rights groups was necessary to protect the circus and its customers, Feld's attorney argued, and he noted that donations to PETA have risen, not fallen, since the start of the conspiracy.

Feld was sued by Norfolk-based PETA in Fairfax Circuit Court because the headquarters for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is in Tysons Corner. The trial is expected to last two weeks.

PETA's first witness was a man with no love lost for either side: Charles F. Smith, former chief financial officer of Feld Entertainment and the immediate supervisor of the investigator who launched the covert probes into PETA and others. But in 1997, Feld fired Smith after he was arrested for also surveilling his girlfriend. Smith then sued Feld and tipped off some animal rights activists to the circus's clandestine operations, PETA attorney Philip J. Hirschkop said in his opening statement.

Smith acknowledged yesterday that he hired private investigator Richard Froemming to not only monitor such groups as PETA and the Performing Animal Welfare Society but also stage counter-demonstrations outside circuses where animal rights groups were protesting.

Smith said Froemming provided weekly reports to the top four officials in Feld's organization, including Feld for "a number of years." Smith said he, Feld and Froemming would meet occasionally to discuss Froemming's activities.

Froemming was later promoted to a vice president of the company, Smith said. Froemming originally was a defendant in the case, but he died in 2003.

Hirschkop told the jury that Smith told him in a phone call over the weekend that at one point Froemming had undercover operatives in 26 animal rights groups across the country. Smith said yesterday that he didn't know how many operatives Froemming had but then said he thought it was 16. Smith said he didn't know what, exactly, the operatives were doing.

Hirschkop said in his opening statement that Feld's operatives stole such documents as donor lists and strategy memos from animal rights groups, swiped private information including driver's license and Social Security numbers and illegally wiretapped circus opponents.

Some of the high-profile people targeted included Kevin Nealon, a former cast member of "Saturday Night Live," and Cleveland Amory, renowned author and co-founder of the Humane Society of the United States, Hirschkop said. "They followed [Amory] around as part of the conspiracy," Hirschkop said.

To combat legislation that would prohibit the use of exotic animals in the circus, Feld's representatives would lobby against such bills, Hirschkop said. Sometimes, he said, they did more. Hirschkop said Feld's operatives followed a California state senator who had sponsored such a bill, photographed him holding a check from an animal rights group and persuaded him to withdraw the bill.

When PETA first sued Feld in 2001 for the return of documents Smith had alerted them to, the group was amazed to receive its own internal financial statements, personnel information, phone lists and other documents that Feld had, Hirschkop said. He alleged that Froemming told Smith that Froemming's "chief duty was to destroy PETA." The group then filed its conspiracy suit.

Thomas J. Cawley, Feld's lead attorney, said the purpose of the lawsuit was for publicity. "There's no harm to PETA," Cawley said in his opening statement, noting that the organization's annual donations rose from $8 million in 1989 to $29 million in 2004.

"Ringling's people take very good care of their animals," Cawley said, adding that the circus has never been convicted of violating the federal animal welfare act.

Still, Cawley said, in the 1980s, animal rights activists began targeting the circus. He said they began by harassing customers outside shows and then disrupting performances. In the late 1980s, Cawley said, bomb threats were made to shows, to Feld headquarters and to circus trains traveling between cities.

Ringling had to defend itself, Cawley said. The company hired Froemming to improve security, at shows and on trains; to monitor possible protests; to plan counter-demonstrations; and to lobby against anti-circus legislation.

Cawley acknowledged that Ringling had PETA documents but said he didn't know how Froemming got them. He said "infiltration is not a crime, which is good because that's what PETA likes to do." He said Feld didn't authorize any infiltration and did not recall seeing any PETA documents.
(END OF WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE)
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Date: Tue Feb 28 12:45:32 2006