Meet Matt Sikorski and Shannon Kenny—professional mushroom foragers, artists, and vegan recipe developers living in Princeton New Jersey. In addition to supplying mushrooms to local restaurants, Shannon works as a nurse on the cardio/neuro floor of a hospital. Matt works part-time at a local hardware store, walks dogs, owns a repair business, and paints commissions in his signature psychedelic style.
When I asked if we could do this interview, they invited me over for a stunning home-cooked meal featuring a classic yet fully veganized Bouef Bourgonion that would make Julie Child herself proud.
Elana: Let’s begin with your vegan origin story.
Shannon: “We both went vegetarian before we even met. I had been vegetarian for 15 years before going vegan. My sister actually went vegan first, and I remember being at a friend's house and watching a video that had some footage of slaughterhouses, and after seeing that video and doing some more research, I knew I could never eat meat again.”
Matt: “For me, I was successfully recovering from a kidney transplant and feeling clear-headed for the first time in a long time. The transplant, and confronting my own mortality, forced me to grow up and be more mindful about life and death. I was driving down a pretty farm road on a beautiful sunny day and I thought to myself that I had no more right to be here than anything else, it really hit me hard. I was thinking about how all life is just biological speculation and intelligence, a relatively new extension of biology, didn’t give me a right over other animals’ autonomy. Beyond that, I always realized it was so easy to give up meat given my access to healthy and nutritious food living in an affluent suburb, so I felt that it would be a vulgar extension of the ego to keep killing animals to survive when there is literally no reason to. When me and Shannon met, we both wanted to make the transition from vegetarian to vegan, and together gave each other the push to get over our dairy addiction ”
Elana: Let’s talk a little about activism, what’s your stance on it?
Matt: “We don’t like to argue or proselytize about veganism unless we’re specifically asked about it. We just love to show people how to eat amazing food. Honestly, I think vegans generally don’t do a great job of making veganism look good. The idea of the militant vegan or vegan police turns people away. Nobody wants to be lectured or embarrassed, and when people debate or argue they often leave further entrenched in their original opinions. If you are the kind of vegan who can successfully engage in that style of confrontation, that's great. Personally, I’ve just have so much better success at affecting change by cooking vegan food for people, buying them vegan groceries, and modeling healthy vegan living. We need the entire world to eat vegan imperfectly rather than a few of us doing it perfectly. I tell new vegans all the time, if you mess up, and you will, especially in the beginning, it’s ok, just acknowledge it, learn from it, and move on.”
Shannon: “Yeah, we like to approach it through positive reinforcement and support. I bring in food to work and my co-workers are always like, ‘What are you eating? That looks good. That smells good.’ We like to invite people to cook or bake with us.”
Elana: Can you talk a little about being a vegan nurse amongst cardiac patients, Shannon?
Shannon: “The cardio/neuro floor is known for being one of the hardest floors to work on because the patients are SO sick. I try to talk to them about not eating meat completely…or at least as little as possible for their own health, but eating is so deeply tied to culture and tradition, that it really needs to be treated more like an addiction. People are truly addicted to eating a certain way. I’ve actually seen quite a few nurses go either completely vegan or drastically reduce their meat intake just from working on the cardiac floor. The patients on the other hand can be so resistant to being put on a restrictive diet. The emotional aspect of eating is often overlooked when trying to encourage people to go vegan.
Matt: Dairy can be especially addictive. There’s research that even shows that the casein protein in dairy has an opioid-like effect on the brain. It’s hard for people to get over that.”
Elana: Food really is more than just nutrition, so how do you handle honoring food traditions and holidays while being vegan?
Shannon: “We have an Irish soda bread recipe that’s been in my family for over 400 years. It calls for buttermilk so I make my own plant-based buttermilk by simply adding lemon juice or vinegar and letting it curdle for a few minutes before using it. The recipe comes out just the same. I can veganize almost any recipe. I’m at the point where I actually prefer to write my own recipes. If there are certain foods people want at a holiday, I know I can make a vegan version of it. I make my own vegan cheeses, cheesecakes, we can even make all sorts of ‘seafood’ dishes completely out of mushrooms.”
Matt: “We just made some vegan ‘prosciutto’ by brining and smoking some watermelon radishes we grew! If you are creative enough you can make nearly everything vegan!”
Elana: Let’s talk about the mushrooms because you two are serious foragers! How did you get into it?
Matt: “We love to forage for mushrooms. We love spending time outside and decided to buy a guidebook* and just start doing it. It’s just one of those things that no matter how many times you find a mushroom, you get the same adrenaline rush and dopamine release just like it’s the first time. I think it's just your body responding well to what you've evolved to do, find food in the woods! You can’t get these mushrooms in a store so you HAVE to go look for them. I’d also like to add foraging is a wonderful way to form a relationship with nature, explore your spirituality, and practice mindfulness. Forests don’t care about your identity, job, how much money you have, that thing you did you're embarrassed about, or any of those silly things. It's just you and the natural world”
Shannon: “We make Kentucky fried chicken of the woods, seafood dishes with lion’s mane or there is a mushroom called shrimp of the woods that can get infected with a parasite, and it turns into something that looks and tastes almost identical to a shrimp. We’ve used those to make vegan shrimp scampi and coconut shrimp.
Matt: “Sometimes we sell mushrooms to local restaurants. A local pizza shop makes a special “buffalo chicken of the woods” pizza using the mushrooms we bring. Our record is a massive 17-pound chicken of the woods mushroom.”
Shannon: “We both love to teach, so we started teaching a series on foraging for edible invasive plants at the Mountain Lakes Preserve in Princeton. We wanted to show people how to get out, spend time in nature, and look for food. Most of the plants we teach people to forage for are invasive species like mustard greens and mugwort. They are bad for our ecosystem but completely edible and delicious. If people go out and pick just one invasive plant, that is still a huge help because a single plant can spread thousands of seeds”
Matt: “We actually found a morel mushroom growing in an area where we had gone out with volunteers to forage for invasive mustard greens. It was a beautiful thing because morels require a symbiotic relationship with maple trees and can’t grow if the soil conditions aren’t just right. Since some invasive plants like mustard greens, change the pH of the soil, that area was previously difficult for morels to grow. It was a good sign that the soil was healing. We’re always excited to see a morel, but we were extra happy to see one there.”
*The book recommended is: Mushrooms of the Northeast: A Simple Guide to Common Mushrooms by Teresa Marrone and Walt Sturgeon
Elana: Finally, before we end, what are you making for Thanksgiving?
Shannon: “We host a completely vegan Friendsgiving and Thanksgiving every year. We always make a vegan cheeseball, garlic black truffle mashed potatoes, a pumpkin lasagna, roasted asparagus or Brussels sprouts, and a pumpkin cheesecake for dessert!
Matt: That pumpkin lasagna weighs like 10 lbs! It’s definitely a special holiday dish we do.
FAST FACTS:
Plant milk of choice: Soy or Almond for smoothies, and oat for everything else since it has the lowest carbon footprint.
One vegan food/product/recipe you think everyone should try at least once?: Shannon’s famous vegan cheeseball recipe! Get her recipe here!
Favorite vegan dish or restaurant in NJ?: Pasquales Pizzeria III
FOLLOW THEM ON:
Shannon: @crafty_lady_22
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