For difficult lighting situations like this;

1. Shoot in RAW...much more flexibility

2)Radlafx is bang on with his method..use adjustment layers for curves to bring out the shadow areas, then mask the areas that are blown out.  I usually flatten the layers then and adjust saturation on the flattened image.

This beats shelling out $$$$ for extra metering...and unfortunately your digital cam will never have that range anyway.

Also Tom, "hoping for better lighting".....it rarely happens.....

In youth, we learn....with age, we understand.