Photo: deepellum-boston.com.

A weekly look at the draft selection in beer-friendly bars across the country.

No need for a double take. Yes, Deep Ellum is the name of a neighborhood in the Dallas area. And yes, this week's What's On Tap features a Boston bar. But don't worry, Deep Ellum co-owner Max Toste has an explanation: "My business partner, Aaron Sanders, was born and raised around the Dallas area, and Deep Ellum was always his favorite place to go."

Toste describes the Dallas neighborhood as an area teeming with tattoo parlors and rock joints -- the kind of place with "people who don't wear suits to work." "We always thought it would be a cool name for a bar," he recalls. Toste and Sanders found a similar feel in the Boston neighborhood of Allston, so about three years ago, when opening their own bar, the name was a perfect fit.

"I love beer," Toste states proudly. "I wanted to have a bar that was awesome."

What exactly is his idea of awesome? "Our plan was to be very artisanal. Everything we sell and promote is handmade stuff." And that ideology goes beyond just beer into the realm of their cocktail selection and food. Toste's explanation for such strong demands on what Deep Ellum serves is simple: "I don't do anything half-assed."

Read more about Deep Ellum and its complete tap list, as of this Tuesday, after the jump -- and for future draft lists, check out its Web site. Drafts update whenever they're changed.

A weekly look at the draft selection in beer-friendly bars and eateries across the country.

With Mother's Day just around the bend we hunted far and wide for an establishment whose name pays lip service to mama, happily stumbling upon the tiny but tantalizing tap selection at Cambridge (Mass.)' Hungry Mother. Though she only boasts five suds, they're solid: "Craft and quality beers pair just as well with food as wine [does]," says owner John Kessen. "Although [our draft list] is small, it's a really interesting one and a good cross section of styles."

This Mother plays favorites with careful curation:

5. Stone Ruination IPA is one of the most intense and highly regarded imperial IPAs on the market.

4. Bear Republic's Hop Rod Rye is another nationally renowned India Pale Ale but, since it is brewed with 20 percent rye malt), it boasts a distinctly different flavor.

3. Fisherman's Brew, a local amber lager, donates part of their proceeds to out-of-work fisherman.

Read Mother's last two picks after the jump.

Some cooks reach for Sriracha, the ubiquitous Thai hot sauce, in a pinch. Others swear by soy sauce. And then there are those who refuse to reveal (*cough, cough* butter) what made the dish you just demolished delicious. For our part, we've developed a tiny -- OK, midsized -- crush on an infused chili oil, and we need to talk about it.

Sid Wainer & Son's Domaine de Provence pepper-spiked oil is fantastic. A drizzle of the fiery goodness rescues storebought and homemade guacamole alike with a heady, late-blooming heat on the palate. According to owner Henry Wainer, it's also tasty on bruschetta. We plan to carry it on our person all summer -- potentially awkward in the 90-degree swelter -- using guerilla tactics to douse any crustaceans and pork we spy sizzling on the grills of party hosts. (Brooklyn, consider yourself warned.)

Wainer has been equally passionate about the oil since meeting its producer at a dinner in France 18 years ago. Such culinary serendipity, he declares, "enriches the world." Can't argue with that.

Imagine for a moment that you went to a local bakery and got a loaf of your favorite raisin bread. When you get it home you find small rocks are in the mix. Would you accept five bucks as compensation from the bakery?

That's what one customer in Somerville, Massachusetts did. As reported by The Consumerist, Michael Snyder originally asked for five more loaves of the raisin bread, but the bakery offered $5 and he took that. Apparently the raisins were from Chile and used an older production method that makes it easier for debris to get into the raisin supply. The bakery sent back the rest of the raisins.

There has been no talk about any injuries from the rocks, so I assume everyone is fine. I also suppose that things happen and you just need to be able to take things in stride, but five dollars? What would you do in a similar situation?

Sausages in the case at Karl's Sausage Kitchen in Saugus, MA. From Flickr user kaszeta's Flickr.

I'm posting images of sausage counters the world over each weeknight (and occasionally weekend) witching hour until I run out. Please use the comments section to post links to your Flickr or personal site faves, and perhaps you'll see 'em posted here late some evening.

Previously-- Midnight Sausage: Brooklyn, NY

Listeria is being blamed for the deaths of two elderly men in Massachusetts.

The listeria was traced to a Shrewsbury, MA company called Whittier Farms. Two other people have gotten sick. Authorities are telling customers to throw out all Whittier Farms products that they might have in their homes. The brand names included in the notice are Whittier, Balance Rock, Spring Brook, Maple, and Schultz.

Listeria is often found in products such as cold cuts and hot dogs but can be found elsewhere as well. Many of us eat some form of listeria every year but we're not affected by it.

Brookline, MA has voted to stop using trans fats in their restaurants and schools.

The city becomes the third in the country to ban trans fats (used in frying and baked goods), along with New York City and Philadelphia. Boston and Cambridge are thinking about doing it as well.

Did you know that states have "official" foods. Yup, and Massachusetts is no exception. The foods include Boston Cream Pie, cranberries, baked beans, chocolate chip cookies, and corn muffins (corn muffins?).

Gridskipper takes that list of foods and tells us what restaurants in Boston serve the best ones. For example, though Boston Cream Pie was invented at the Omni Parker House Hotel (also home of the Parker House Rolls), you can get the best one at The Oak Room at the Copley Plaza Hotel. For beans, head on over to the Blue Ribbon BBQ. They're not traditional baked beans, but they're great (and I can vouch for this place - best BBQ I've ever had. If they were closer to my house I'd probably eat there twice a week).

[thanks to Jade Walker]

The name of this dessert immediately grabbed my attention. It's pumpkin pie...in fudge form!

It's a decadent dessert available at The Fudge Bar in Quincy, MA and at their second location at Logan Airport in Boston. It's $11 a pound at the former and $12 a pound at the airport, and I have no idea why the prices are different.

There's one thing I'm not clear on though. This is "fudge," but it's pumpkin-colored. The article says that the ingredients include cinnamon, ginger, and pumpkin, but doesn't mention any fudge or chocolate. Does fudge only become fudge when their is fudge introduced, or can fudge be fudge without being chocolate-oriented? From the pic it doesn't appear that there is any "fudge" (as I know it) is included, though it looks like it has the consistency of a fudge-based dessert.

When I lived with a bunch of college student friends (I wasn't in college at the time, I was older so I could stay home and convince them to play tennis or stay up late instead of doing their school work), the pizza of choice was Little Caesars. We'd go there at least once a week for the current deal they were running. It was usually some sort of buy one, get one half off deal or something similar involving two pizzas. But I haven't had one in almost 15 years. They don't have locations around where I live now, and for a while there I was wondering if they were even still in business.

Of course, they are still in business, and as this Boston Globe piece discloses, they are about to open 70 (yes, seventy) locations in the Boston area, to challenge other chains like Pizza Hut and Domino's.

Cool. It will be great to actually have the Little Caesars option again in my pizza world.

Marshmallow Fluff is a wonderful concoction of sugar, corn syrup, egg whites and vanilla that is whipped into a creamy and spreadable goo. It turns out that the tasty treat might join the list of foods banned from Massachusetts schools, despite the fact that the spread is a local icon, invented in the state back in 1917 and has been a popular New England pantry staple ever since.

It's most famous use is the Fluffernutter Sandwich, which combines peanut butter and Fluff between two slices of bread, and this is what is getting the sweet stuff into trouble. While parents have packed Fluffernutter sandwiches as special treats in kids' lunchboxes for many years, some parents recently noticed that they are being included as a school lunch option by the schools themselves - 1 out of every 14 schools, to be exact.

Iconic or not, some parents don't want this sandwich served at school and would like to see it banned from campuses.

A Concord, Mass., farm that grows produce for local charities recently reported 200 pounds of parsnips missing. According to The Concord Journal, it appears that someone snuck on to the property of volunteer-operated Gaining Ground and uprooted the tasty vegetables. So far, no arrests have been made. What's baffling is that the crops apparently aren't visible from the street and, according to Gaining Ground's coordinator, parsnips are hard to spot anyway. There's some speculation that this may have been an inside job. Hopefully it won't happen again. I really have to wonder how one even manages to abscond with 200 pounds of root vegetables.