Mycoscope
January 2026
Wild All Year | | Take advantage of our promotion on mushroom grow kits, now $20 instead of $25, including shiitake, oyster mushrooms (blue, white, pink, and yellow), as well as hedgehog mushrooms. Enjoy the promotion | Want to take it further? On the morning of Sunday, March 1, 2026, a Mycoboutique expert will lead a cultivation workshop, in French, where you’ll learn to grow these varieties both indoors and outdoors. The workshop ends with a hands-on session, and you’ll leave with mycelium to start your own culture. | | Comforting and refined, this mac and cheese combines the sweetness of butternut squash, the creaminess of cheese, and a touch of truffle. A gourmet, seasonal recipe that reinvents a classic as a festive dish. Fresh truffle available in-store or by special order, with truffle products available year-round. Truffle Products | | Join us for an immersive evening in English dedicated to the edible mushrooms of Northeastern North America (here). Whether you are curious, a food lover, or an aspiring forager, you’ll learn how to identify them, understand foraging safety rules, and get inspired with tasty ideas to cook them. A convivial and enriching evening for all nature and gastronomy enthusiasts! | Head into the forest with our expert guides for a day of wild mushroom foraging, less than 75 miles from Montreal. From July to August 2026, excursions are planned in the Eastern Townships, the Laurentians, Lanaudière, and Mauricie. Each excursion includes a guided walk, an identification session, and a tasting. | Intensive course January 24–25 + excursion 2026: learn to identify wild mushrooms, understand their ecology, and master the professional basics (sustainable harvesting, regulations, and marketing). Essential training for enthusiasts and future professionals. | | Wild mushrooms all year round | Whatever the season, you can satisfy your cravings by choosing the dried or frozen wild mushrooms you want to have on hand in our store or online: morels, porcini, matsutake, black trumpets, lobster mushrooms, djon-djon, maple milky caps, chanterelles, not to mention our many cultivated species. When stored properly, they will keep for over a year. | Dried Many species of mushrooms are well suited to dehydration: they regain their flavor and nutrients after being soaked in warm water for about 30 minutes. For a result that ensures long-term preservation, the moisture content of fresh mushrooms (about 90%) is reduced to 10%. . | | Frozen Freezing is an interesting alternative. It is more demanding but better preserves the appearance of fresh mushrooms. It involves briefly blanching the mushrooms (2 minutes), vacuum packing them, cooling them before freezing, and then storing them at a low temperature (-18°C) until consumption. Whether dehydrated or frozen, the most popular mushrooms are available in our store and, in the case of the former, can be easily ordered online. | | Lilliputian Hallucinations | Gulliver's Travels The Lanmaoa asiatica is an edible mushroom with the look of a bolete. It lives in symbiosis with Yunnan pine trees in China, where it has been enjoyed for centuries. It resembles several European boletes, notably the two-coloured bolete (Baorangia bicolor) and the curry bolete (Boletus sensibilis). These are also edible, though they prefer partnerships with oak and beech rather than pine. In China, Lanmaoa asiatica is known as jiànshǒu qīng, “watch the hand turn blue” because, like its counterparts here, it turns blue when touched. | | Bluing is common to many hallucinogenic species: the coloration results from the oxidation of psilocybin. But that is not the case here. In fact, no psychoactive molecules have been found in these mushrooms, either in lanmaoa or in its local lookalikes. Yet this lanmaoa differs dramatically from the latter: when eaten raw, it causes strange hallucinations, visions that often feature miniature figures (‘xiao ren ren’ in Chinese). | | To date, there is no explanation for this phenomenon, except that it is reminiscent of the Lilliputian hallucinations of Charles Bonnet syndrome in psychiatry. To showcase the hallucinogenic effects of this amazing mushroom, we turned to artificial intelligence. AI represented these incredible visions in an image of a parade of miniature musicians. Mushrooms have many surprises in store for us! | | | | | |
