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Now about that raised deck garden in this article....can’t one just line an area with brick and plastic and accomplish the same thing? I’m garden illiterate.

You can, but you’ll run into problems with plants damping off (its when they rot just above ground level). Ground soil is pretty good at draining properly, as are raised wooden beds, but plastic liners tend to force the water back into the soil.
If you must do brick and plastic, make sure you have coarse stone in the bottom of your bed and several holes in the plastic for adequate drainage.
With a mix of raised beds made from reclaimed floorboards (luckily I live in an old area where there is a lot of renovation), hanging baskets of tomatoes, beans and capsicums and two deep dug flower beds for onions, shallots, potatos and Jerusalem Artichokes (and peas along the fenceline) in the garden, our vegetable costs run to about $5 per week for four people year round. We have a very small garden, but follow the intensive gardening rules and always have a glut of produce.
We do eat a lot of salad though and gather from the local parks and roadside verges on our walks - dandelion leaves, for example, are excellent in salad.
As far as meat goes, we buy from the farm. We buy live, and pay for the slaughtering ourself and do our own butchering. One pig will last us nearly 6 months. Butchering and making sausage, ham, etc takes a little bit of effort, but is a skill well worth learning. Every time someone has to cut the meat - you pay for it. So buy a half pig, or two halves, and cut it yourself.