Before Carmen Perr was sharing garden-to-table recipes with millions of people, she grew up in a busy household with lots of mouths to feed.
“I grew up eating fast food,” Perr, the youngest of six children, told Fox News Digital.
Now a Los Angeles-based creator known as Carmen in the Garden, Perr began honing her green thumb more than a decade ago while working in real estate acquisitions.
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“I started gardening in my first corporate job as a way to cope with stress and anxiety, and I started with just a few potted herbs,” she said. “I didn’t know what I was doing, but then it slowly grew over time.”
Eventually, as she gained more space, her garden expanded to include fruits and vegetables, prompting her to learn how to cook with ingredients she had never used before.
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“I had never cooked an artichoke until I grew one,” she said.
Those lessons paved the way for her forthcoming debut cookbook, “Cook What Grows: Seasonal Recipes & Gardening Wisdom for Everyday Eating.”
Perr said the book’s roughly 100 recipes aim to “spotlight fresh produce in super flavorful but attainable ways.”
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“I think that there’s a big misconception that eating seasonally has to be expensive,” Perr said. “But when you go to a farmers market or your local grocery store, typically what’s in season is the more inexpensive option.”
She recommends using your senses to guide your produce picks: Look for vibrant colors, feel whether an item is firm or soft and check that herbs smell fragrant.
“When you pick up a bunch of cilantro, you should immediately be able to smell it,” Perr said.
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The cooking process starts as soon as you’re picking out ingredients, she said, so she encourages shoppers to slow down and take in the experience.
Herbs can do much more than finish a dish, she added.
Fresh, dried and even seeded forms of the same herb can taste totally different, so Perr encourages home cooks to experiment rather than follow strict rules. She uses fresh oregano steeped in hot oil with feta and makes dill-marinated chicken wings finished with dill salt and a dill dipping sauce.
“You are getting a full dill immersion in a chicken wing format,” she said.
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Sage’s drying quality works well to balance rich, fatty dishes, and it was even traditionally rubbed between the hands as a home remedy for clamminess, Perr said.
For dried herbs, Perr also recommends crushing them in your hand before adding them to a dish to help release their oils.
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“Crushing it before you add it to something will explode the flavor,” she said.
Her overarching goal is to help people feel more connected to the food they cook.
“I’m hoping to inspire people to cook what grows, but in turn, grow what they cook,” she said.