APAD: Meat and two veg

Meaning:

   Meat and two vegetables, that is, meat with potatoes and another vegetable,

   is a traditional English meal.

 

Background:

   The term, in an allusion to the commonplace nature of this type of meal, has

   also been used metaphorically to denote an ordinary, run-of-the-mill

   offering. In the 20th century it has also been a jokey reference to male

   genitalia.

 

- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]

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Meat and two veg would've sounded haute cuisine to many Chinese in the 50s and

60s. The British used to sail abroad and pillaged the world to better their

life-style. We landlubbers looked inward and lived on our atavistic wits and a

newly acquired faith, the triumph of the spirit over the material. We had vast

land and hard-working people, we reasoned, and we settled with nothing ordinary,

let alone failure. Production brigades reported in some years unheard of

bounty: thousands of catties of grain, tens of thousands of catties of sweet

potato, and 250 catties of cotton a mu. (千斤糧，萬斤薯，棉花產量二百五)