I think you are right about getting a chest freezer. We just need to get more organized. We have a very small freezer right now, so we end up only buying maybe a week's worth of meats at a time. I think most of the "expense" is the difference between having a cartload of cereal, rice, crackers, soup, etc and a bagful of (smaller) packages of chicken and other meats. We eat a couple dozen eggs a week so far.

The ketchup thing ain't a necessity, it was more for fun. I don't mind spending the money on things like that just to make life more interesting, but it's a heck of a lot more pricey than regular carb items.

The comment about the lo-carb specialty items was right on. I was pricing out lo-carb dressings as well, and the specialty Caesar dressing was nearly twice as much as the regular - and the difference in carbs was something like 0.2 versus 0.3. Big deal!