Extreme caesar, anyone?

Here's a product that Vincenzo's in Waterloo has a hard time keeping on the shelf: The Extreme Bean, pickled hot and spicy beans created by Matt and Steve's Tasty Beverage Co. in Mississauga.

If you like 'crunch combined with zing' and want to feel good about getting your vegetables in January (from June to November they use Ontario beans), this product is for you. They are addictive on their own - I've been eating them since 8:30 this morning - or you can use them to garnish bloody caesars. Matt and Steve have found a way to take caesars to a whole new level: Extreme Caesar-dom. Here's how:

1) Run a lime wedge around the rim of a glass
2) Pour your favourite caesar spices onto a saucer (perhaps you'd like to try Matt & Steve's glass rimmers). Dunk your glass rim first into the spices and twist. The lime will make it stick.
3) Carefully plop a few ice cubes into the glass and splatter them with Worcestershire and Tobasco sauces. The flavour infuses the ice this way.
4) Add vodka to your heart's content (you are your own liquor control board) and fill the rest up with Clamato juice.
5) Place one or two Extreme Beans into the glass so they shoot out like a straw. Sip (or guzzle) and enjoy!

The Extreme Bean has done for caesars what ketchup has done for french fries. Its hot zing sneaks up on you and its awesome crunch sticks with you to the end. I also hear they're great in martinis and on an antipasto plate. Or you can buy Extreme Bean Bites to add to nachos, pizza and burgers. Here's where you can find the product near you.

A bit of Canadian history about the caesar:
In 1969, Walter Chell invented the bloody caesar cocktail at the Westin Hotel in Calgary to commemorate the opening of Marco's, the hotel's Italian restaurant. Using its Italian cuisine for inspiration, he came up with a mixture of hand-mashed clams, tomato juice, vodka, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper; then garnished it with a celery stick and named it for the Roman Emperor - a 'Bloody Caesar'. Later, with assistance from Chell, the Mott Company went on to develop 'clamato' juice. The popularity of the cocktail spread and today, about 250 million Mott's Clamato Caesars are created and consumed annually.