A couple has revealed they spend just $50 a week on groceries by eating roadkill and wild plants.
Eric Joseph Lewis, 41, from Knoxville, Maryland, and his girlfriend, Jess Russell, 26, insist that everyone should treat ‘plants like people’ and encourages that people forage for food.
Eric and Jess also feast on roadkill such as opossum, groundhog, squirrel, and occasionally wild turkey or ducks and will often make wild berry smoothies.
By doing this, the couple only goes to the supermarket for special drinks and treats and spend just $50.
Speaking to The Mirror, the couple detailed how their unique diet keeps them from splashing out hundreds of dollars at the grocery store.
Eric said: ‘I eat wild food on a daily basis and grow a good amount. We should treat plants like people. We eat roadkill.
‘If you can get over the fear and discomfort of this being a dead animal, you can recognize it was a life lived in freedom and respect it.’
The 41-year-old noted that instead of letting the roadkill rot, the couple uses it for bone broth, to feed to their dog Leela, and even turns it to leather.
‘One deer could be 60 to 100lbs of meat – about 60,000 calories. Nothing had to die for it,’ he told the outlet.
Eric first started learning about yoga and meditating in his late 20s and lived in a tent.
He worked one day a week as a painter to help build his food shop.
It wasn’t until a close pal of his revealed he lived on top of a blueberry patch that Eric got interested in the various plants’ animals can munch on.
Now, two decades later, Eric lives in a nursery. He grows fruit, nut trees and edible plants.
Eric said: ‘I eat nettles, sochan – which is the same family as a black-eyed Susan – and sunflowers.
‘Now the berries are coming in – we have it in smoothies for half the year. We pick goumi berries and blackberries.’
During Maryland’s colder months, Eric travels to Florida, where he forages for mushrooms and sets traps so he can catch wild animals such as hogs and iguanas.
He also frequently goes fishing and catches catfish.
The self-proclaimed ‘mushroom enthusiast’ revealed that he and Jess pick out fungi such as morel mushrooms and hen of the woods.
He also said that he is even teaching his pup how to forage for mushrooms as well.
In addition to mushrooms, the couple often pics coconuts and avocados.
At home, they often have a meal that is made with home-grown onions, sweet potatoes, chayote and topped with a wild mushroom they foraged.
Eric and Jess still go to the grocery store for things like kombucha, coconut yogurt, lentils, rice and other treats – however, they only spend around $50 a week.
He told the outlet: ‘We spend $50 a week between Jess and I. We get sweet drinks and treats. If we just got what we needed it would be $20.’
