meal of the lazy.

this is what happens when:
1. i feel like i need to have a burger and fries for dinner,
2. i have to do laundry on a weeknight, and
3. i'm exhausted from a full day of teaching.

i can't remember the last time i had a boca burger, but it seemed like the right thing to have for dinner on monday. and i'd been craving french fries for a few days and didn't feel like fighting the urge any longer. in between trips to the laundrette, i managed to pick up everything i needed to assemble this terribly low-effort meal:

i'm lucky to have a small health foods store just around the corner, even if it is a little pricy. (is a 4-pack of boca burgers usually $5? i feel like that's a lot!)
right across the street, there's a cramped little bodega where i grabbed a hoagie roll, at once eliminating the need to trek further in the cold to find hamburger buns and leaving me with enough roll left over to recreate a beanball sub.
next door to the bodega is a chinese restaurant which, like many in NYC, serves hybrid chino-latino food and crappy american staples like french fries and fried chicken.
it was cold and rainy and i was grateful to be able to get everything i needed with minimal outside time. it meant that i wasn't too bummed out when my burger-fries combo disappointed. i must have romanticized the boca because it was pretty lackluster. i suppose the makeshift roll didn't help, but it just seemed too mushy and blah and packaged-tasting. the french fries should have redeemed the meal, but they were slightly undercooked and tasted like they were fried in oil that should long ago have been given over to a higher cause, like motoring a converted biodiesel bus on its way to burning man.

i've really been avoiding packaged foods and not eating out very much and although this meal isn't necessarily typical of either phenomenon, it did kind of validate my slow conversion.