I am so tired at the moment that last night, while I was sleeping, I dreamt of sleeping. I was in a place, maybe a hotel room, with my family. There were big French doors opening onto a sandy beach. Outside it was night, and the surf was whispering to the sand. A few people were surfing in the moonlight; I was asleep with the fan on. At some point I woke up and moved to a soft chair near the curtains, gently rippling in the breeze, and went back to sleep.
It seems like everyone I speak to at the moment is struggling with sleep. It’s not getting to sleep that’s the problem, but staying asleep. People are waking up at two, three, four, five in the morning, unable to get back to sleep, waking feeling un-rested and ragged. We all deal with it differently, we all seem fine, but we’re getting very tired.
It’s been over four months since we went into lockdown, and people are coming around to the idea that ‘things will never be the same again’. The pandemic is continuing to pick up pace in Victoria, making things uncertain here in New South Wales and across Australia. The international political landscape feels like a gathering storm. The global economy appears to be held up by optimism alone. Work is a moving target. And then there’s the cheese.
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A few weeks ago, not long after I got all excited about home-cooking, I started getting pretty bored of all the home-cooking. To combat this I decided to start experimenting with international cuisines. Forget Indian, Thai, Japanese and Italian. I was after something more exotic, more exciting. Like Czech, Mauritian, Nigerian. One night I decided to whip up a dish some friends had introduced me to when I was living in the Savoie: tartiflette. Essentially a fancied-up French-style potato bake, I figured this iconic Savoyarde dish would be perfect on a chilly mountains eve.
I could tell my plan to liven up my kitchen-life was working when I got to the supermarket and felt a frisson of excitement. Suddenly I was seeing Woolies with new eyes. I peered down at the shopping list, then sashayed gaily down aisles I’d never visited before, buying things I’d never usually buy.
The recipe calls for reblochon, a hard French cheese that we don’t tend to make in Australia. I didn’t find it at Woolies or Coles, so I went to a couple of local delis. But no-one had reblochon. So I called our local Blackheath fromagerie, the This Little Piggy Deli. The owner wasn’t there, so I left a message.
A couple of days later she called me back. Sorry, she told me, we couldn’t get the whiskey-soaked cheese for you, we’re all out. But if you don’t mind waiting a few days we can probably try order some more in for you . . .
What? There’s such a thing as whiskey-soaked cheese?! Yes, there is.
I called her back to ask about the reblochon. She didn’t have any of that either. In fact, her little, wedge-shaped boutique deli is almost all out of international cheeses, she told me. They used to come in on international passenger flights – international freight was too expensive for little cheese suppliers. But with the reduction in passenger flights, international producers can’t export their cheeses anymore. It might be a while before we see any reblochon in Blackheath, she said.
That was ok. I had some other cheeses that would do the trick. But how was she going to get through the pandemic without any imported cheese? Her answer was really simple, and really cool: she’s turning to local artisan cheese-makers, who are having troubles of their own. Many of them used to sell to airlines (you know those little slabs that go on food trays?), and others exported huge quantities overseas. They’re all eager to unburden themselves of a huge oversupply at the moment. We got to talking about how many cool local cheese-makers there are in Aus, like Grandvewe and the Bruny Island Cheese Co., which does some delicious French-style cheeses. Artisan cheese is actually pretty huge in Aus, so now’s the time to get into it!
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There are many things you can try to get yourself to sleep. Hot water bottles and valerian, chamomile, melatonin and good sleep hygiene. No blue light after dark, a cup of warm milk with honey and a hot bath. Apparently there’s also an amino acid called tryptophan that helps with sleep. It’s found in most proteins, including milk and cheese. Maybe this is where the cup-of-warm-milk-before-bed idea originates.
I might try some post-dinner cheese tonight and see how it goes. How does the saying go? Sweet dreams are made of cheese . . . or was it weird ones?
To those of you who tend to wake in the night, kids crying or partners stirring or all alone in a big bed: I wish you a deep, full sleep tonight.