When we're trying so hard to think of healthy stuff, every time we turn around we are saying something like "easy as pie", "piece of cake", "soup to nuts", "icing on the cake", "everything else is gravy"......you get the picture.

Personally, I never found pie to be all that easy - the crust anyway - I've never made a flaky pie crust in my life. Somehow even the pre-packaged stuff ends up like cardboard when I'm done with it. So where does a saying like that come from? And, why do you suppose we have so many old sayings that involve food?

Ok, see, this is how geeky I am. I research. OED lists the following:
Probable source of "easy as pie":
The US magazine Sporting Life, May 1886: "As for stealing second and third, it's like eating pie."

"Piece of cake" I know for a fact comes from an Ogden Nash poem from the late 1800s, cause I remember studying it in school, but I'll have to go Google it and find it for you.

"Soup to nuts" is obviously a reference from beginning to end - back from when a formal meal began with a soup course and ended with a nut/fruit/cheese course when the gentlemen retired to sip brandy and smoke cigars.

[History and Language Geek, present and accounted for. ]

As to why - I think that food is a common denominator for everyone. Almost everyone understands or can relate to a food reference, because we all eat. So I think it's natural that these statements would evolve based on our everyday life.

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What's a "mot"? Thanks!

I guess nobody really uses that word any more do they

It's an old saying, probably overused like a cliche.

I used to love Ogden Nash PhotoChick. Have no idea why I haven't read him in so long. I tried to look up "piece of cake" on ask.com and got nothing but cook books

Ooh, thanks RealCdn. Cool site. I can see myself as a History and Language Geek in training already

A mot is short for "bon mot". It's French and literally translated it means "good word". But it's common use is that it's a clever response in a conversation or a quip or short pithy statement.

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http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/piece-of-cake.html

Oh COOL site. I notice it uses the same phrasing as some of the OED entries. They must do their research in the same places I do!

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You know what I think?

"I think a hundred pounds of flour'll make a mighty big biscuit"

One of my DH's favorite sayings.

edited to add

he also says "Flaw in the Slaw" for when something goes wrong!

also "cool beans/bananas". whats so cool about beans and bananas? The only cool thing about beans is that rhyme "beans, beans the magical fruit"

I've never heard that before!

[quibble] Ogden Nash was born in 1902 and died in 1971 [/quibble]

Oy. I should have known that. I can't imagine who I was thinking of then. Nash is the one who wrote "Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker" right?

Now I have to go Google and figure out who I was trying to think of from the 1800s.

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Maybe Mark Twain? I think it was either Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn who said the "polite as pie" thing right?