Photo: roboppy, Flickr

The Hamburglar has been moonlighting as a secretary.

A 34-year veteran of the Westfalen Construction Association in Dortmund, Germany, was fired after eating a burger from her boss's lunch cart.

The 59-year-old secretary, Magdelene H. (her last name was withheld due to German privacy laws), was fired after eating a frikadelle (flat, pan-fried meatball) and two halves of a roll without permission from a buffet she had just finished preparing last July for her boss and his guests, Spiegel reports.

Yes, you read that right. Thanks to the modern phenomenon of solutions to problems no one has, there exists concept design for a device which, depending on your viewpoint, is genius, preposterous, useless, or somewhere between the three. Please meet the CHOMPr hamburger grasper, which according to the copy is "a conceptual hamburger grasping device for high-end restaurants." Looking like two coffee tables from a dollhouse from the Eames era held together by those pins Ikea gives you to keep your bookshelf from collapsing, the CHOMPr seeks to ameliorate the conflict between the informal process of eating a hamburger and formal surroundings.

To some, whether you need a hamburger grasping device beyond those at the ends of your arms is sort of, well, silly. But it is very interesting as an etiquette question, because it raises the related issues of utensils as a dimension of table manners and hands as a dimension of utensils. For the former, utensils are a mark of civilization precisely because they aren't your hands, and the development of utensils has followed a trajectory more or less complimentary to the Industrial Revolution, culminating in the Victorian era, when a fully outfitted silver trousseau could top out at 500 pieces and counting.

On the one hand, I have to admit that I am a little creeped out by the amount of coverage that the Obama family is getting. There is no reason that I need to know the menu options offered by Sidwell Friends School or the identity of Michelle Obama's favorite clothing designer. These things have no impact on the President's ability to govern or on my day-to-day life.

On the other hand, I, like so many of my fellow Americans, am fascinated by my new President, and the more I learn about the little details of his life, the more human and real he seems. While I admit to being a little disturbed by the nascent cult of personality that seems to be developing around President Obama, I feel like I can trust him to keep a clear head, no matter how hard the country seems to be working on giving him a messiah complex. In fact, the man who emerges from this National Geographic trailer seems as level-headed as they come.

The Beer Barrel Belly Bruiser is so big that it looks like it might eat Brad Sciullo. Nonetheless the 21-year-old chef from Uniontown, Pa., took down the 15-pound burger along with 5 pounds of toppings in four hours and 39 minutes. For his efforts the 5-foot-11, 180-pound received $400, three T-shirts, a certificate and what the owner of Denny's Beer Barrel Pub calls "a burger hangover."

Sciullo is the first person to ever successfully eat this outlandishly huge burger within the 5-hour time limit. The colossal cheeseburger was dressed with lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, onions, mild banana peppers and a cup each of mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard and relish. Four hours and 39 minutes is a glacial pace compared with the people on the International Federation of Competitive Eaters circuit. The IFOCE is all about speed.

I'm guessing that Sciullo might spend a good 4 hours in the bathroom after eating that much ground beef. At least the chef doesn't have to face any burgers when he returns to work. He works at an Italian restaurant called Pasta Lorenzo's in Uniontown.

AOL Health Editor Katherine Steinberg submitted the photo above for inclusion in the Midnight Sausage series, but we thought it was worthy of a post all its own.

"As I was wandering the streets of London foraging for food, I came across something even more foreign to me than the British slang -- the hot dog hamburger, or the 'express special'. It was so strange that I had to take a picture. I'm not sure what about this makes it faster than your average meal, but I do know that it comes with fries. But don't get too excited, judging by the recent price dip, it won't be popping up in your local deli anytime soon."

Has anyone seen or sampled this frankenfood in London or elsewhere? We'd love a first-hand account.

[via Katherine Steinberg's Flickr]

Today's Feast Your Eyes post is my attempt at stretching out the relaxation and outdoor cooking of Memorial Day just a little bit longer. This image, of a freshly grilled basil burger, was taken by Flickr user Coneslayer and from the looks of things was pretty darn delicious.

How did you spend your Memorial Day weekend? If you made some good food and took pictures, make sure to upload them to the Slashfood Flickr page, so we can all see your tasty creations.

E. coli be darned, I still order my burgers done "as rare as you possibly can." A girl's allowed a vice or two, right?

While plenty of places are still willing to bend the rules, legally speaking, ground beef must be cooked to 160 degrees to kill the creepy crawlies. But you can be safe while still enjoying thick, pink-centered, dripping cheeseburgers. Grind your own beef. Commercially ground beef, for reasons I won't go into here (but if you're curious, read Fast Food Nation), carries a much higher risk of contamination than meat freshly ground in a home grinder.

I buy fatty chuck - 20 percent fat, at least - and put it through the 'coarse' plate of my KitchenAid meat grinder attachment. You can get free-standing grinders pretty cheap at kitchenware stores. Then I mix it, by hand, with a healthy squeeze of ketchup, tons of salt and pepper, Worcestershire sauce and chopped garlic, maybe some cayenne. Don't mix too much, or you'll compress the beef and end up with a too-hard burger. Then onto the grill. A friend just taught me a nifty test for doneness - when pressing on the burger, if it feels firm like the skin between your thumb and index finger when you're fingers are outstretched, it's well-done. If it feels slightly loose, like the same bit of skin when your hand's relaxed, it's medium-rare.

As you fire up the grill this Memorial Day, you may want to take a moment to pay homage to the people who first brought you the hamburger. There is a lengthy and fascinating article on the history of the hamburger on What's Cooking America. While there is some debate about who created the first hamburger, Louis' Lunch in New Haven, Connecticut has a strong claim to the title.

According to What's Cooking, "Louis ran a small lunch wagon selling steak sandwiches to local factory workers. A frugal business man, he didn't like to waste the excess beef from his daily lunch rush. It is said that he ground up some scraps of beef and served it as a sandwich, the sandwich was sold between pieces of toasted bread, to a customer who was in a hurry and wanted to eat on the run."

You can still get hamburgers today at Louis' Lunch. However, don't expect to get any ketchup. The Louis' Lunch website states that their hamburgers "have changed little from their historic prototype [and] are still the specialty of the house. Each one is made from beef ground fresh each day, broiled vertically in the original cast iron grill and served between two slices of toast. Cheese, tomato and onion are the only acceptable garnish -- no true connoisseur would consider corrupting the classic taste with mustard or ketchup."

A Rochester staple, the garbage plate is a whopping stack of (get ready): two hamburger patties and two sides (home fries, macaroni salad, or beans), mixed with ketchup and hot sauce, with a roll on the side for good measure. It originated at Nick Tahou Hots' restaurant over 50 years ago - y'know, before we were worried about stuff like obesity and heart attacks. College kids used to come in and ask for a dish with "all the garbage" on it.

But - gasp - a restaurant in Philly has added the Plate to its menu, with a few changes: fries and mustard pan sauce replace the traditional home fries and hot sauce. Could it be as bad - er, good - as the original?

By day, I am a corporate trainer. In the world of training, we try to say things as concisely and clearly as possible. We avoid stating any extra steps that could possibly confuse our classroom participants. The world of Rube Goldberg is quite the opposite. A Rube Goldberg machine, as stated on Wikipedia, is "an incredibly overengineered apparatus that performs a very simple task in very indirect and convoluted fashion."

Each year, there is a competition held to find the team that best masters the art of inefficiency. This year's task at the Rube Goldberg competition was to assemble a burger consisting of no less than one precooked meat patty, two vegetables and two condiments, sandwiched between bun halves. The rules required that this task needed to take 20 or more steps.

The winning team was from Purdue University and made their burgers in 156 steps! I hope no one was too hungry.

For more on the event, including some more photos, check out the article on Gizmodo.

Doesn't this guy know that it's Burger King where you can "have it your way?"

A man in South Carolina has sued McDonald's after going into one of the establishments and ordering two hamburgers without cheese. Well, he got cheese on them, and it turns out he's allergic to cheese. He's suing for $10 million.

Now, the guy says he almost died (his medical bills were $700, which McDonald's said they would pay but they were turned down), and he's suing because of the reaction he had to the cheese and because his family "risked their lives" to rush him to the emergency room.

If you're wondering why he didn't see the cheese before he bit into the hamburger is because he ate it in a darkened room.

Here at Slashfood burgers have been on our foodar since May. Heck, now that we're into summer they're on everybody's mind, including the good citizens of Akron, Ohio, who hosted the National Hamburger Festival this past weekend.

The hefty hamburger above was cooked up this weekend, but not in Akron. Weighing in at 10 pounds, Big Bad Bubba's Double Wide hails from Huntington, W. Va. Specifically Hillbilly Hotdogs, which last year created a 5-pound burger known as, you guessed it, Big Bad Bubba's Single Wide.

This weekend HH added the BBDW to its menu. This massive sandwich may sport a 6.5-pound patty, but it's still less than one-sixth the weight of the largest burger I've ever heard of. Either way, I'd love to see Kobayashi take one down, if only so he could declare himself a big bad bubba, even if he is only half-wide.

Hamburgers have been in the food news a lot lately. I started noticing it back in May when Craig LaBan (the same one who is being sued by a restaurant he negatively reviewed), the food critic at the Philadelphia Inquirer, went searching for the best burger in Philly. He was so moved by the experience that he wrote and performed a love ballad to the cheeseburger.

It was seemingly quiet in the burger world for a while, but then this last Wednesday, there was that burger recipe competition at the Rare Bar and Grill in New York City that whittled over 400 burger recipes down to a manageable four. The cluster of recipe finalists were prepared by the chefs at the Rare and presented to an illustrious panel of five movers-and-tasters. Adam Kuban of Serious Eats was one of the judges (along with food critic Ed Levine) and he wrote up a thorough blow-by-blow of the experience.

Just today, I learned that this weekend, Akron, OH will be hosting the National Hamburger Festival. They will be offering a variety of events, including Bobbing for Burgers (in a kiddie pool of ketchup), a Best Burger Competition and a Miss Hamburger Festival Contest (for which, at the ripe old age of 28, I am too old to enter). If you live in the Akron region, you should know that tickets cost $5 a day and are still available (kids under 7 get in for free).

Thanks to Vanessa PR for the pic.

Before anyone ever heard of Harold, much less Kumar, before the invention of the Crave campaign, before the word Slyder was trademarked I was a teenage White Castle worker. On this last day of National Hamburger Month I'd like to share my memories of working at America's oldest hamburger chain, as well as my thoughts on its present state of affairs.

I started working at White Castle during my senior year in high school. I'd eaten their burgers with my folks as a kid and had enjoyed their "restorative" effects after drinking with my buddies. We used to call the tasty little suckers "White Crapples." When one opened in my neighborhood, I figured what the hell, and applied for a job. After management determined I had a pulse and some level of manual dexterity, however minimal, I was hired.

Back then the uniform was slightly different than it is today. I remember wearing a brown shirt and a baseball cap. All burger cooking was done in clear view. To the left of the register, customers watched their square patties being steam-grilled. I still remember the time a Little League team ordered 100 burgers. Instead of letting the line back up, we opened another station and got to work.

Once after blowing a joint with my co-worker Max, the burgers on my flat top started burning. As I stared into space, he sounded the alarm by screaming, "Bang your head" at me. He averted disaster by ladling onion water onto my griddle. Back then there was no shortage of onion water, since we used dehydrated onions. Small dust clouds would form as we poured dried diced onion into stainless buckets before adding water.