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The Food Network’s dynamic Extreme Chef revolves around three chefs who undergo torturous adventures while cooking under extreme circumstances in each episode. In the sneak peek episode last night, the chefs arrived in Landers, California, to find themselves in an Old West ghost town.

Executive Chef Kevin Meehan of Café Pinot in Los Angeles, Malibu Seaside Chef Gina Clarke and Executive Chef Paul Menta of Amigo’s Tortilla Bar in Key West were the willing participants in a game that stressed every muscle, challenged cooking styles and paired unlikely (and often unpleasant) ingredients.

In their first task, the chefs were directed to three wooden boxes from which they retrieved their proteins. Anyone who has ever watched Animal Planet, or knows anything about reptiles, would immediately recognize these crates as similar to those containing live creatures.

Inside the boxes the chefs found the rattlesnake meat for their dishes, meat which had been killed, skinned, and placed in a burlap sack. Unfortunately for the chefs, the burlap sack was placed in the midst of five non-venomous, but otherwise live snakes. All of the chefs rose to the occasion, including Chef Clarke, who Chef Menta had referred to as “Malibu Barbie” earlier in the show.

Rattlesnake is a stringy, gamey protein that host Marsh Mokhtari explained tastes more like pork than chicken. Chef Marco Canora of Hearth Restaurant and Terrior Wine Bars in New York City, who claimed an extra helping of culinary fame on Food Network’s The Next Iron Chef, served as the judge for the rattlesnake challenge.

Chef Menta prepared a rattlesnake buco, which turned out to be an epic failure. Using a meat grinder, he included the bones of the rattlesnake in the mixture which he claimed would add flavor. It’s often wise to use bones in stews and other dishes where you need intense flavor fast, but for rattlesnake buco? Not so much. Chef Menta was shot down in judging when Chef Canora pulled several of the bones from his mouth and flicked them off of his fingers onto the ground.

Chef Clarke set out to prepare a rattlesnake Spanish frittata. Without a whisk, she used the handle of a spatula. As the eggs cooked at a snail’s pace, she switched gears and made a rattlesnake scramble. It didn’t impress Chef Menta who said for a show like Extreme Chef, scrambled eggs was a weak dish.

By the end of the first (what can only be described as “reward”) challenge, victory went to Chef Meehan, who prepared an inventive rattlesnake mille-feuille, which means a layered, composed dish, with a rattlesnake patty, whiskey-soaked French toast, topped with an egg sunny-side up. In winning, Chef Meehan won his choice of three knives for the next competition and the right to assign the other inferior knives to his competitors.

In the prophetic words of Judas Priest, if the chefs thought the worst was behind them in reaching through live snakes to retrieve the long (and creepy) skinned rattlesnake, they had another thing coming. The next challenge was exhausting to watch.

Judges for the second challenge included Chef Canora again as well as Time Magazine food writer Josh Ozersky. Twelve hungry cowboys would serve as the tasting group.

The chefs first had to procure all of their cookware from a chuck wagon. Sounds simple enough, but the chuck wagon was a long way from their cooking stations, and they had to transport all of the cooking materials in uber-heavy whiskey barrels. The chefs clearly struggled as they rolled the awkward barrels through muddy water hazards and over rocky tumbleweed terrain.

For the protein choices in the second challenge the chefs could choose between quail, buffalo brisket, and wild turkey leg. Chef Menta made it his priority to retrieve the quail. Chef Meehan grabbed the brisket, and Chef Clarke took the turkey leg.

With Chef Menta resorting to using turnips as stirring spoons and celery pieces for tongs, Chef Meehan used tin foil to create a makeshift pressure cooker for his brisket which he’d cut too large to cook quickly. To impress the judges, Chef Meehan also selected cactus which proved to be a challenge, especially after he sliced his thumb and required the attention of a medic. Chef Meehan braised his brisket in wine and added fresh herbs and potatoes.

Meanwhile, without enough cooking space to accommodate the giant wild turkey legs, Chef Clarke opted to pull the meat from the turkey bones and make turkey chili, which the judges would later call out as another safe choice. Chef Menta’s strategy was to use potatoes to line his pan under the quail to prevent them from cooking too quickly and drying out, a valiant effort that would fall flat at judging. Everyone suspected Chef Meehan had cut his buffalo brisket too large to become tender with the allotted time frame.

As if rolling barrels and cooking with limited materials weren’t enough, the chefs were told they would be required to make ice cream with some unlikely ingredients. The ingredients of the ice cream were encased in giant 50-pound blocks of ice which the chefs had to retrieve with railroad spikes. (Never mind that the chefs were working in a heat index of upwards of 100 degrees.)

Chef Clarke chose sweet potatoes and chili for her ice cream, while Chef Meehan picked corn and red pepper. Chef Menta selected black bean and corn for his ice cream. And to add insult to injury, in the next twist, the chefs’ hands were handcuffed for the remainder of the second challenge, which lasted for the remaining ten minutes of cooking time.

Chef Meehan received seasoning praise from Chef Canora, while judge Ozersky called it flavorful, but like a “Sahara sandstorm of dryness.” Chef Meehan’s corn and ancho chili ice cream went over well with both judges.

Chef Menta, with his mojo marinated quail stew wasn’t so fortunate. The cowboys said they missed the gamey flavor of the quail, and judge Ozersky said the flavors weren’t coherent. But Chef Canora praised Chef Menta’s use of black beans like chocolate chips in the ice cream. Judge Ozersky likened the main dish to “Chernobyl quail” and prison food, but praised the audacity Chef Menta displayed in trying to make a restaurant quality dish while handcuffed and with a pen knife.

The judges saved the most praise for Chef Clarke’s chipotle turkey chili with smoked paprika, saying it “retained moisture and that flavor permeated through the dish.” Both judges praised her decision to pull the meat from the turkey bone. The cowboys reflected statements from the first challenge that Chef Clarke’s dishes lacked an Extreme Chef level of creativity. Judge Ozersky went as far as saying Chef Clarke’s ice cream was “gratifying in an infantile way.”

At the end of the challenge, the judges and cowboys said Chef Gina took the easy route, and that Chef Menta made a noble effort, but that the quail was under seasoned and overcooked. It would be the last challenge of the episode for Chef Menta, leaving Chef Clarke and Chef Meehan to complete in the final challenge.

One task remained in this sneak peak episode of Extreme Chef. The prize: $10,000 and the title of “Extreme Chef” for this episode. The challenge: cook the perfect single bite to serve on a silver spoon. The catch: the chefs could only use miners’ tools and hot coal, and they had to cut open hay bales to find their mandatory ingredients of watermelon, dandelion, pickled eggs and chicken. (Eww!) With both chefs perplexed as to what to cook, Chef Meehan quickly put his cast iron pans on the coals, which host Marsh Mokhtari praised as clever since they take a long time to heat.

Host Marsh pointed out that Chef Clarke overestimated the amount of time she had to cook, a statement that was echoed in her still rare chicken halfway through the challenge. Chef Meehan proceeded to grill his chicken over the coal, but he removed the skin, a mistake the judges were quick to notice.

Chef Clarke realized that her chicken wasn’t cooking quickly and devised the same plan for the second challenge as she had in the previous challenge. She removed the chicken from the fire and cut it into smaller pieces.

With the pickled eggs, Chef Meehan made a creative sauce gribiche by dicing the eggs and adding some smashed capers. Without the benefit of mayonnaise, he added some buttercream, serving it with his grilled chicken, watermelon and dandelions braised with beer, bacon and cabbage. The judges said it was a “meal in a spoon” and had “nice variations and flavors.”

Chef Clarke served a watermelon infused chicken with sautéed dandelion greens and pickled yolk. The judges said it was “seasoned well, but one dimensional, lacking the balance of acid and sweetness, but bright and summery” despite the arid, dusty surroundings.

Between the clean, fresh taste of Chef Clarke’s dish and Chef Meehan’s “culinary chops,” Chef Kevin Meehan walked away with the impressive title of “Extreme Chef” for this episode.

Stay tuned next week, when the chefs travel to Newhall, California, where they’ll choose from unmarked canned goods to prepare a meal in 30 minutes, knock on residents’ doors to gather cooking materials from their pantries and cook a hot appetizer on the block of a car engine (and all of this in the midst of a torrential downpour).

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York, PA –
Three months ago, Tiger Waste rolled out new portable toilets, expanding its portfolio of construction site services.

Now, the newly purchased fleet of bright orange outhouses is ready for its close-up.

Afterall, “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition’s” thousands of volunteers and crew members, chugging water to stay hydrated, needed someplace to take a tinkle, and then some.

The show filmed this week at the Newberry Township home of Brian Keefer, who was paralyzed in a 2008 gymnastics accident.

Typical construction sites require one portable toilet, said Terry Stewart, owner of the York County-based waste disposal service.

Before filming, 20 Tiger toilets paraded into the Keefer family’s neighborhood — one of many behind-the-scenes logistical details sometimes lost in the hype when the popular television production came to town, recruiting more than 4,000 community volunteers.

Part of the underrated posse, people such as bus driver Eli Fenton of Hanover made 50 two-mile trips Wednesday, shuttling volunteers back and forth from Red Mill Elementary School.

Her shift was 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. A few weeks earlier, her boss at Conewago Valley School District told drivers a “mystery” assignment was available, if anyone was interested.

It was important to keep the home’s location secret until June 19, when the show surprised Keefer with news that his home had been picked for remodeling.

“None of us knew what we were doing,” Fenton said. “We all signed up blindly.”At the site, some portable toilets, serviced each day at 5 a.m., bordered Gary and Jayne Hatterer’s backyard, where their well-traveled lawn took a beating.

The couple moved into their house in the beginning of March. The show removed 23 pine trees from their front yard to make room for production vehicles.

“We just told them to do whatever,” said Jayne Hatterer, who, like other nearby homeowners, received a guarantee that the show would restore their

yards after filming, planting new grass and landscaping.

Also on her property, two catering trucks provide 24/7 service to helpers — a supplement to food provided by local businesses, such as Giant Food Stores, Rita’s Italian Ice, Texas Roadhouse, Rutter’s and Dairy Delight.

In one of the catering carts, which travels with the production, Justin Fingeroth and Deanna Claudio were cooking up waffles, crabcakes and corn dogs.

Each week, they said, they give out 7,000 cups of coffee, 1,500 hotdogs, 1,000 ice pops and more. They try to accommodate requests.

“Somebody here wanted an iced coffee Vanessa Williams-style,” Claudio said. “I had never heard that before.”

Along with food and water, safety was one of the biggest logistical concerns.

Two emergency medical technicians and four first responders from the Newberry Township Fire Department kept watch from a tent, which housed a “mighty mister,” blowing cold water and air on dehydrated volunteers.

No serious injuries were reported, Deputy Chief Mike Rupley said Wednesday.

The EMTs tended to minor cuts, a bee sting and a sprained ankle, which happened Tuesday night after a volunteer stepped in a ditch.

Firefighter/EMT Bob Solomon said the medical staff worried more about the spectators, who can’t partake in the free food and water available to volunteers and crew.

“They’re going to come out and watch for hours, hoping to shake Ty’s hand,” said Solomon. “They’re not prepared with sunscreen. They’re not properly hydrated, and they don’t have access to the resources of the show.”

A big crowd is expected Sunday during the house’s reveal, when the show’s trademark shout of “Move that bus,” will take place.

After that, it’s clean-up time.

By mid-week, the paths carved of metal fencing leading spectators up Dubbers Drive will be taken down. The trucks will leave. So will the portable toilets.

Life will return to normal in the Newberry Township neighborhood, with the exception of one family and their brand new home.lboyer@ydr.com; 771-2062

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By GWENN FRISS

gfriss@capecodonline.com

One-third of people surveyed in 17 countries say they are changing their diet because food costs more, according to a global study released last week by Oxfam America.

Of course, a glance at last week’s grocery receipt will tell you the same thing: Prices are going up and product sizes are going down — leaving shoppers hungry for any deals they can find.

Harwich resident Ashley Bunker and her friend Heidi Richardson are meeting the challenge with coupons.

The pair created the Cape Cod Clippers Coupon Swap to make people aware of how much they can save, using a combination of store coupons, manufacturers’ offers and Internet deals, to name a few.

“I had started doing stuff like this a couple of years ago when things were financially hard for my family. I found I was saving $80 to $150 on a big shop,” says Bunker, 32, who grew up in Brewster.

For Bunker, going to the grocery requires a strategic plan. She reads grocery ads from several stores and matches them with coupons. She gets some help from the Internet where websites such as www.mavenofsavin.com and www.livingrichwithcoupons.com allow you to search a product name to find when and where the manufacturer last offered a coupon, how much it’s worth and when it expires.

Bunker simply files coupon inserts she finds in the newspaper or in the mail by date and pulls out what she needs for that week’s sale. Sometimes the coupon helper websites will direct her to an online source where coupons can be printed.

Bunker says she also checks local newspapers for inserts as well as online coupons, such as the ones found at southcoasttoday.com. She adds that she has not yet explored direct-to-cellphone coupons.

The goal, Bunker says, is to get the sale item free (or as close to free as possible) after the coupon is applied. When she appeared on the “Homefront” cable television show earlier this month, Bunker had her eye on Ronzoni Garden Delight pasta, which was on sale for $1 and for which she had 14 coupons each worth a dollar off a box.

If she gets more than she and her family can use, Bunker donates the surplus to the food pantry.

At the checkout, Bunker routinely uses a score of coupons, so it can slow things down a bit as each is scanned.

“I try to go shopping late at night because I start feeling bad if it gets annoying for other people,” says Bunker, can empathize with other busy people since she runs the office for her husband’s two businesses and is mom to a 6-year-old boy and an 18-month-old girl.

But, she says, “I started couponing to increase my grocery budget. I see it like having another paycheck.”

Bunker got so good at acquiring coupons that “Six months into it, I realized, oh my God, what am I going to do with my expired coupons? I did some research online and came across the organization that allows you to adopt a U.S. military base overseas. Some of the commissaries allow military families to use coupons up to six months after they expire.”

Paying $10 to $30 a month for postage, Bunker has mailed $5,000 worth of coupons to a naval air facility in Atsugi, Japan, an Army base in Vicenza, Italy, and a Marine base in Iwakuni, Japan. She found the bases at www.ocpnet.com.

Although he doesn’t collect coupons as extremely as Bunker, Al Hurder of Cedarville is a savvy shopper who is finding the practices that earned him the nickname “Frugal Al” as a building contractor are keeping his monthly church dinner shopping at or under budget.

Hurder coordinates and cooks for a community outreach dinner that Swift United Methodist Church in Sagamore runs at 5 p.m. on the last Wednesday of each month except July and August. The next one is June 29. The dinners are free but donations are welcome. With about 75 people at last month’s dinner, Hurder says, the meal is paying for itself and then some.

“Now that we’re working in the black, I want to make a meal at the church for a local homeless shelter and do something for people who are truly in need,” says Hurder, who plans to bring the idea before the church outreach committee.

As for pre-meal shopping, not everyone has a large freezer like the one in the church recreation center so not everyone can buy 30 pounds of pork when it goes on sale for $1.88 a pound at Market Basket or 40 pounds of chicken at Restaurant Depot in Cranston, R.I. But friends and relatives make a great impromptu buying club when a deal pops up, and most residential freezers can handle 5 or 10 pounds of poultry.

Judi Palmer, director of marketing and external communication for Stop Shop’s New England division, says bargains are split up into weekly specials and “real deals,” marked with green tags on the shelf near the item.

“There are usually around 5,000 real deals every week, and 50 weekly specials,” she says.

Your home computer can help as well. Palmer says shoppers who create an account on www.stopandshop.com will have access to another kind of coupon, known as “load to card.” Once you sign in to your account, you’ll be offered a list of savings on items you’ve purchased before or complementary items: Click on the items you plan to buy and — once those items are scanned — your store courtesy card will automatically put in the discounts.

Another way to save, Palmer says, is with discontinued items and markdowns, such as yesterday’s baked goods or ripe produce. “Those racks are probably in a different place in each store, but we do have them.”

Palmer says the discount program that gets the most response these days is the one gas point for each dollar spent. For each 100 points, you earn a dime off the per-gallon price of gas at Stop Shop or Shell stations.

“The gas is huge because everybody’s got to drive. We get letters from people who have saved $1 a gallon.”

It may seem like saving on the grocery bill is a full-time job, but for some, it becomes second nature.

Now retired, Hurder says he has time to stop in and see what’s on sale. He saves money by consolidating trips, for example, going to BJ’s Wholesale Club in North Dartmouth after picking up what he needs at the Home Depot and then stopping at Market Basket (which is right off the highway) in New Bedford on his way home.

“You’re looking for specials — taking a few minutes to walk through the store. If people have to really watch what they’re spending, it’s good to slow down, take a look around and read the newspaper ads.”

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Several foodstuffs saw sharp price hikes in May, including meat, up 5.1 per cent over the past year; bread and cereals, up 5.8 per cent; and fish, which is 11.4 per cent higher than a year ago.

Few households have been unaffected by rising food p

rices, yet it doesn’t have to be a one-sided battle. Rising prices are an opportunity for investors who want both diversification and the prospect of positive returns.

There’s a compelling investment case based on strong fundamental demand against limited supply, even after a recent weakening in agricultural prices.

The importance of the demand/supply balance was demonstrated in 2010 when extreme weather conditions saw the northern hemisphere experience one of the hottest summers on record.

This caused wildfires in Russia, where wheat export bans were quickly introduced, and considerable dust storms across China. Severe flooding in Pakistan caused tragic loss of life as it submerged 17 million acres of fertile land, killing 200,000 livestock and washing away large stocks of grain. Drought has also ravaged supply in the European and US markets.

Consequently, prices of food staples such as wheat, maize and soya beans have risen between 40 and 100 per cent over the past 12 months – some prices touching record highs.

However, other factors have also had an indirect but significant impact. For example, higher oil prices have filtered through to agricultural production and transportation costs and “fuelled” demand in the biofuels sector, for which corn and maize are key components.

More fundamentally, the growing global population is having a direct impact on agricultural prices. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) predicts that food supply will have to rise by 70 per cent by 2050, to feed a population which is expected to multiply by a third (to nine billion).

Interestingly, it is the rise of the middle classes – particularly in the emerging economies – that will put the most pressure on food production for the longer term. Economic growth, urbanisation and aspirations for improved standards of living are driving higher food demand.

However, these developments are putting a strain on the levels of arable land and water for irrigation necessitating substantial investment. The FAO estimates suggest that £50 billion of investment into the sector will be required annually to feed the global population in 2050.

Despite some easing in food prices since April, analysts expect continued supply shortages in 2011. Already, bad weather threatens key food stocks.<!—
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