What have we stopped noticing?
The things we say, do, and accept without thinking twice.
Look closer where it comes from, what it assumes, and the case for keeping it
The essentials: the plain, no-frills core of something.
A plate built around a killed animal, treated as the only real source of substance, with the world’s plant staples as the trimmings.
That everyone at the table eats meat. Said to people who don’t, it describes a meal they are not in, and treats their everyday food as the unusual choice.
This site is named after one swap of it. During a meeting, someone noticed there were people at the table who don’t eat meat and playfully swapped the phrase to “tofu and potatoes”, drawing a chuckle from the room.
“Meat” meant food of any kind in Old English and narrowed to flesh around 1300, so the phrase is older than any argument about diet, and nearly everyone saying it means the essentials and pictures nothing at all.
- meat · Online Etymology Dictionary
- meat and potatoes · Wiktionary