I’m in a post-lunch turkey coma. Except it’s not really from the turkey. This gets all scientific and technical at the end, so if you want to just skip today’s entry I won’t blame you.
I’d made a crockpot turkey roast earlier in the week and brought the leftovers in to the office for lunch. The recipie was really simple – 2 small onions and a clove of garlic sliced up at the bottom of the pot with a pinch of salt, sliced red potatoes and baby carrots around the outside of the pot and a boneless skinless turkey roast nestled in the middle under a layer of baby carrots. The turkey roast had a packet of gravy with it that I poured in along with about half a cup of cheap red wine. Stew on low for 10-12 hours. It should come out moist and tender enough that it falls apart when you touch it with a fork. It should be enough to provide coma-inducing lunches for five people.
Actually, I could probably have done without the wine. The gravy would have been enough liquid and the wine stained things in a disturbing fashion. The baby carrots were kind of brownish and the turkey had a strange purplish tinge about a quarter inch deep wherever the wine had soaked in. Maybe just a splash of white wine next time, just enough so that the potatoes don’t darken from being in contact with air.
I had that for lunch about half an hour ago. I tend to take slightly early lunches. Partially it’s because I tend to have a tiny breakfast, like a single bagel. It’s also a holdover from when my boss and I were the only people in our office and we’d stagger our lunch hours so that there would be someone staffing here in case a client stopped by.
There have been a couple of times that my lunch schedule has backfired. Usually it’s after big meetings. Leftover meeting food is kind of a perk of the job, but the meetings don’t get over until about one or two O’clock, and by then I’ve already eaten. I could launch into a whole diatribe here about appropriate meeting leftover etiquette here, but I’d rather get back to the turkey.
The post thanksgiving dinner nap is just as traditional as canned cranberry jelly, and I’m sure you’ve heard people blame it on hormones in the turkey or something similar. I happened to mention that I was in a turkey coma to a client of mine and I had the whole thing debunked in excruciating scientific detail. I guess she’d just written a paper on it or something.
The hormone that gets the blame for thanksgiving sleepiness is a little molecule called L-tryptophan. It gets digested into the B-vitamin niacin, which is then used to produce the neurotransmitter serotonin. Serotonin has a calming effect and regulates sleep. So the extra serotonin from the niacin from the L-tryptophan from the turkey is to blame, right?
Well, no… Because L-tryptophan isn’t the only thing in the meal. The other amino acids and proteins you consume also produce neurotransmitters, and it all balances out. Basically, in order to get enough excess serotonin to have a noticable effect, you’d need to eat just L-tryptophan on an empty stomach.
So what makes you tired after thanksgiving dinner? The effort of digestion mostly. Thanksgiving foods tend to be high in fats, which take a long time and a lot of energy to digest. Plus people tend to overeat, which compounds the problem. Add a glass of holiday wine to that mixture and it’s nap time for everyone…