A Daughter's Secret Food Storage Program? Or Kitchen Midden?

Two days ago, my eight-year-old daughter pulled a slice of bacon out from under the kitchen table, showed it to my wife, Katie, and then put it back. Not a piece or a small fragment of bacon, mind you, but an entire slice. Puzzled, Katie investigated. And discovered a wide assortment of food resting on a wooden support underneath the tabletop.  Sound unlikely? Well, check out the way our table was engineered. Here it is, all innocent-looking.

But underneath, there are two "secret" compartments -- one above each table support:

Upon the above platform, Katie found far more than just bacon. Also present were large pieces of dinner rolls, taquitos, chimichangas, quesadillas, and fish sticks, among other things.

Thoroughly grossed out, Katie left the stash untouched and awaited my return home from work. The moment I walked through the front doorway, she told me what my first project would be that evening.

First, I scooped all the food out from its secret hiding place:

Then I swept it up.

Two mysteries surround this secret cache of cast-off food: first, the identity of the guilty party; and second, why she ditched yummy food. Bacon? Seriously?! You're getting rid of bacon? Why not vegetables?

If my parents had had such a table when I was a young child, and I found so perfect a hiding place, I would have filled it with peas, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, and all manner of vegetables. But mostly, I would have filled it with bread crusts. I hated bread crusts more than just about anything. Why? Well, because they were so, uh, crusty. I used to discard them by simply dropping them on the kitchen floor underneath my chair. This meant that they were discovered quickly, and made it very easy for my mother to ID the guilty party. As I grew older, and therefore more sophisticated, I discovered the adhesive properties of peanut butter. This meant that crusts from my peanut butter and jam sandwiches ended up glued to the underside of the table. It took my mom longer to find those, but find them she did.

Given the extreme degree of desiccation, it is likely that the food has been squirreled away under our tabletop for a very long time. My guess is, most of the items date back to the Cretaceous Period.

Congratulations dear daughter or daughters! You have been far more successful than I ever was at hiding unwanted food! May you always find such success in every endeavor you pursue!