The Bookless Club: Have you ever been disappointed in a change in a commercial brand?

Opinion: Making mincemeat out of mincemeat.

Published Jan 05, 2025  •  Last updated 11 hours ago  •  11 minute read

Homemade mincemeat. Photo by Kuvona /PNG

I’m distracted. I’m trying to write this column while surreptitiously keeping an eye on a squirrel with designs on my bird feeder.

He wants the suet block.

Can’t say I blame him.

Turns out I, too, am craving suet.

This craving used to be satisfied each Christmas. At the end of the traditional turkey dinner, there was always a mincemeat pie. That pie still makes its annual appearance, but it no longer satisfies. Something has changed. Was it me? Or was it mincemeat? I don’t know, but maybe the clue lies with this pesky squirrel.

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For the past several years, I’ve insisted upon a giant slice of mincemeat pie only to be oddly discontented after eating that long-awaited dessert. I could never put my finger on it. Something was off. Something was missing. The pie might be worthy of a blue ribbon — expertly made and served with a scoop of the very best French vanilla ice cream — but it just didn’t satisfy. It was treacly sweet without any depth or nuance. … Hold that thought. I’ve got to go bang on the window. That damned squirrel.

So, where were we? Yes, mincemeat — long a staple of Christmas dinners everywhere — but slowly being replaced by just about anything. Over the years, my family had tried all of the usual commercially prepared mincemeat. We relied upon the Woodward’s version for years, but eventually sampled the brands hailing from the birthplace of mincemeat, Jolly Old England — Tiptree, Robertson’s, Crosse and Blackwell, even Harrod’s own. I liked them well enough to eat it directly from the jar.

(The little bugger is back. I’ll just take a minute to chuck a boot at him.)

This year we finally called it like it is.  Out of a selection of three desserts, nobody wanted the mincemeat pie. It was pronounced that this was mincemeat’s swansong. Christmas 2025 would not feature this former bastion of Christmas delights.

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(Will you look at that? This squirrel’s an artful dodger. He’s pretending not to notice me pretending not to notice him hanging upside down trying to get past the squirrel baffle.)

I decided to look into the mincemeat matter more deeply. It turns out that there’s been a slow devolution away from mincemeat that includes beef suet. Out of about a dozen commercial brands of mincemeat, I could find only one that included any reference to this hallmark ingredient. Today, if there’s any reference at all to suet, it will be vegetable suet … which is often palm oil-based.

It turns out you can make your own traditional mincemeat quite easily. It’s essentially just raisins, currants, citrus peel, chopped apples, plus loads of brandy and spices. If you want to replicate a historic mincemeat from the 15th, 16th or 17th century, you’d be adding minced beef along with the suet.  And just what precisely, dear squirrel, is suet? Suet is beef fat, but not just any beef fat. To be true suet, the fat is harvested from around the kidney and has a distinct, crumbly texture. Jackson Meats is a full-service butcher that has been in business in Vancouver for a century now. Year round, they offer a pound of ground, frozen suet for $7, but they see an uptick in demand in the months leading up to Thanksgiving and Christmas as die-hard mincemeat fans resort to making their own. What’s the difference that suet makes in a mincemeat pie? Well, think of mashed potatoes without butter. Consider how turkey is improved with a drizzle of gravy. Of how birdseed is improved when embedded in fat.

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Suet adds umami, which is the Japanese term for “delicious savory taste”. Without suet, mincemeat is sort of like boiled trail mix baked into a crust. There’s a reason that damned squirrel is devoting so much energy into getting at my suet block bird seed. Can’t say I blame you, squirrel. I totally get it.

Jane Macdougall is a freelance writer and former National Post columnist who lives in Vancouver. She writes The Bookless Club every Saturday online and in The Vancouver Sun. For more of what Jane’s up to, check out her website, janemacdougall.com

This week’s question for readers:

Question: Have you ever been disappointed in a change in a commercial brand?

Send your answers by email text, not an attachment, in 100 words or less, along with your full name to Jane at thebooklessclub@gmail.com. We will print some next week in this space.

Last week’s question for readers:

Question: What are your run-ins with unmitigated gall? How did you deal with it?

• I volunteer for an animal rescue by selling plants on Facebook. The Marketplace post states all money goes toward a parrot rescue. One woman bought irises. I gave her a substantial number of plants for $30. A year later, she messages to tell me the colour of the flowers are “hideous”. I told her to dig up the plants and bring them back. She did, complete with blooms still on the plants. I returned the $30 and told her that the money was going to be taken from the birds. She goes home and gives me a one-star review.

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Linda Mah

• My first job when I was 16 was working for a fried chicken take-out restaurant that had a few inside tables. One quiet afternoon, a family of five came in and ordered soft drinks. Once served, they immediately brought out a cooked chicken bought at the local super market and began to eat it. The only other staff member was the cook who was a year older than me. Dumbfounded and too polite to say anything, we let them have their meal and cleaned up their chicken bones after they left.

Loraine Littlefield

• Years ago, my mother told me of the time my grandma helped out the wife of her husband’s nephew who lived on the same small, cul-de-sac street as our family in the 1950s. Let’s call this woman Mimi. She had complained to someone that her sewing machine stopped working and hearing of this grandma kindly offered to come over and try to fix it for her. Mimi wasn’t very sociable and didn’t often spend time with the rest of the families on the street.

While grandma was bent over the machine for some time, trying to get to the source of the problem, Mimi got up and made herself a cup of tea and sat sipping it while Grandma worked at her voluntary task. Grandma remarked, mildly, that she wouldn’t mind a cup of tea. Mimi went to the garbage, pulled out her used tea bag, and proceeded to make grandma a cup of tea.

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You could see this as a galling example of stinginess, but I actually think it’s a sad story of a Scrooge-like existence. We were in the halcyon days of people knowing their neighbours and helping them out, but she seemed stuck in fear of not having enough. She couldn’t even spare a teabag for someone doing her a favour.

Elaine Bougie Gilligan

• We used to have a large house that we offered to a few friends over the years to host their wedding receptions in. At one such reception, friends of ours who had not been invited showed up. The bride, who I was chatting with at the time, spotted them across the room and commented, “What are they doing here?” She only had a passing acquaintance with them and wasn’t particularly fond of either of them. I told the bride I’d take care of it. I approached the couple and asked if I could help them. The woman said they had known about the reception and since they were friends of my husband and I they figured we wouldn’t mind if they joined the party. When I explained that technically, at that moment, the house was not really ours, but the venue for the reception for the newlywed couple, who had paid for all the food and drink, and since they had not been invited it was inappropriate for them to be there. The woman turned to her partner and said, huffily, “See, I told you she would be like this.” To which I replied, “If you knew I would be like this, then why did you come?” They left in a snit and spread the word later how “rude” I had been, which thankfully most people found laughable, given the circumstances. They wouldn’t talk to us for years. No great loss.

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Susanne de Pencier

• Many years ago, a neighbour who lived in back of us always seemed to be in financial difficulty. We were approached to lend them money — don’t remember the reason — and, being softies, said yes. A couple of days later, there was a knock at the door. It was a delivery from the local florist shop with this huge bouquet, I would assume paid for with my own money, but signed from them. We were floored and will never forget that.

Trudy Halliday

• As I was walking home from a stroll around our local park I saw a man walking his dog half a block in front of me. As he passed my front yard he took a big arm swing and threw his full doggie bag into my front yard. I raced to my garden and picked up the bag and ran down the street to catch him. When I caught up, I called out to him and handed him the bag saying, “I think this belongs to you.” Needless to say, he didn’t apologize.

Patience “Babe” Kelly

• I have been buying and selling stuff on a community website for a few years now. In the past year, I have bought one item from a neighbour, and I have sold two items to her. Recently, I was browsing on the website, and noticed a purse that I had sold her last year. On her webpage she stated that she wanted $55 for the purse because it was worth at least $200.

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I sent her the following direct message: “Hi Z, I sold this purse to you last year, for $10-15. Community online website rules state that you are not supposed to resell (online website) items, for more than you originally paid for them. Have a good day.”

Her response: “Oh dear.” She has not been on the community online website for the past three weeks.

Name withheld

• About six months ago, I had a misunderstanding with two community centre volunteers that I have known for a couple of years. Earlier in the year, due to deaths in the family, I forgot to pay my annual membership dues. When asked to provide my membership, I realized my mistake, immediately paid the fee, and apologized to them. Unfortunately, my apology was not easily accepted and I left the centre after one volunteer indicated that she felt disrespected. At home, I wrote a handwritten card, and apologized for my error again. I also included two restaurant gift cards, with the two specific volunteers names written on them, and mailed the letter. The next month, when I returned to the centre, I asked one volunteer if they had received my card. She said yes, but that they couldn’t accept them, so they had given the cards to the manager of the centre. Recently, after wondering what happened to the gift cards, I was told that the manager had given the gift cards to two other community centre members (not volunteers).

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S. Cameron

• I booked a cremation date with a Vancouver funeral home for Friday, April 22, 2022. On April 20, “K” calls to say the 22nd is off due to a malfunction at the crematorium. I dispute this as I was just there. An hour later, “J” calls and says the death certificate has not arrived from the hospital. I dispute this and called VGH, which confirmed the funeral home had the body, with the certificate. Another hour later, “C” calls and says I did not submit all four contracts in time to book the cremation. He actually says I did not know because I was a new customer, and that it was a new policy. We argue. It is revealed there was a double booking. I tell him to have the owner call me.

That evening, the owner calls me. He stresses that I absolutely needed all four contracts submitted before I could even book a date. He compares it to buying a car — without all the paperwork, I can’t drive it off the lot. I ask about the other phone calls. “C” chimes in, saying all their calls are recorded — they had listened to them, and no one made those calls. The owner agrees, and tries to rebook me for the 25th. I say I will come in to listen to the tapes.

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The next day, the owner says he was misinformed which of the two contracts arrived first. I push to hear the tapes. We hear the first conversations where I book the date, and what to bring. When it comes to the three calls on April 20 on why I lost the April 22 date, not surprisingly, they cannot retrieve them. The owner rants about how much he pays the phone security company and screams at their inept technology. He finally agrees that someone gave me false information about the malfunction, but ignores completely the other two reasons given. He says he will scour the company for who did this, or if someone else lied to me, even though I have named names. I cancel the contract.

I did post the story on Yelp, to which the owner answered, calling me a liar. I find out later there are multiple such incidents with this funeral home, including a $15,000 fine for taking another body without permission! Unmitigated gall? Or just sociopathic?

Tom Chin

• I came home one day and found my neighbour up a ladder on my property hacking at my trees. Only then did I realize that she was the reason that many of my trees had died. She had also hacked at the boulevard trees, but the dity didn’t do anything when I complained. When I wrote letters of complaint to the neighbours, they simply disregarded them.

Name withheld

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