I'm not sure, but I think a question about mincemeat was left hanging.

While it consists mostly of dried/spiced fruit, "mincemeat" does ineed contain meat, just a bit of animal flesh in the form of suet. Not a vegetarian dish, by any means, even if you eschew lard in the crust. (Of course, since you're eating meat anyway, you might as well go all out when baking a mince pie, and make your crust with lard for maximum flakiness.)

Mince pie was my late father's favorite (especially with a scoop of vanilla ice cream). He was undoubtedly introduced to this delicacy by his parents, who both grew up in Ireland and then lived in Liverpool for a couple of years, after getting married and before emigrating to America. In my lifetime, my Mom made mince pies, but only at Thanksgiving and Chrismas, and she never made the mincemeat from scratch. We bought the canned prepared stuff, which is getting harder and harder to find these days.

I've bought a can of mincemeat on occasion when I saw it at the supermarket during the pre-holiday period, and either persuaded my wife to make a crust or just done it myself. (Hers is better, but mine is usually passable.) It's been a while, though ~ we probably haven't eaten mincemeat, or even seen it on a groceryt shelf, since before Katrina (Aug '05).