1 {scene: The streets of Rome, night.}
1 Prof. Jones: Do we have to go now? I'm so full I can hardly move.
2 Monty: I don't understand how you could eat so much pasta.
2 Prof. Jones: It was so good!
3 Monty: Or how you had room for gelato, tiramisu, baked ricotta cheesecake, panna cotta, zabaglione, and then coffee with savoiardi.
4 Prof. Jones: I engaged the dessert stomach.

The dessert stomach is a concept popular amongst my circle of friends. The basic idea is that no matter how much you have eaten for dinner, no matter how stuffed to the gills you are and cannot possibly fit another morsel in, no matter how gorged and bloated you feel, there's always room for dessert. This is achieved by switching further food intake to the special backup dessert stomach, which is reserved for just such situations.

This seems to be a moderately widespread concept, as Google attests, but not so well known as to be common knowledge. Professor Jones' dessert stomach seems to be quite large.

The background photo is another from my 2001 trip to Italy. I don't know what the specific building is, but it's between the Vittorio Emanuelle II monument and Castel Sant'Angelo. It was a daylight photo, which I've Photoshopped into a night scene.