My ant troubles
have always been related, to some degree, to how clean the kitchen was.


That is an oversimplification. I had a carpenter ant infestation and I never
saw them eat anything in particular. Before you start telling me about "wet
wood" they were setting up satellite nests (eggs and such) in everything from
plastic diskette boxes to under our pillow in bed (pretty good yuck factor
there). The bedroom that had the worst infestation was renovated a few years
later and stripped down to the concrete block. I never found any indication
that there was ever any water infiltration anywhere. I did find the home nest
in a flower bed outside and killed it with a surgical application of dursban.
The carpenter ants stopped.