You already have a couple of options that you can use, but CGI::Application::Plugin::TT gives you some extra possibilities as well. You can create a 'tt_pre_process' method in your CGI::Application module, which will be called automatically everytime you call $self->tt_process. This is useful for adding extra global variables that you want to appear in every template you parse in your application.

sub tt_pre_process {
    my ($self, $file, $vars) = @_;
    $vars->{user} = $ENV{REMOTE_USER};
    $vars->{menu} = [
                { text => 'Foo',
                  link => 'foo.html', },

                { text => 'Bar',
                  link => 'Bar.html', },
    ];
    return;
}
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Alternatively, you can setup a tt_pre_process method as a callback (requires CGI::Application 4.0 or greater).

__PACKAGE__->add_callback('tt_pre_process', sub {
    my ($self, $file, $vars) = @_;
    $vars->{user} = $ENV{REMOTE_USER};
    $vars->{menu} = [
                { text => 'Foo',
                  link => 'foo.html', },
                { text => 'Bar',
                  link => 'Bar.html', },
    ];
    return;
});
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