Bejay, around here in the fall there are chili roasters set up along the roadside, and they'll sell and roast a bushel at a time for you. They dump the roasted chili into a thick, plastic sack and hand it to you to take home.

When I roast my own, I just use stainless steel cooking pots with lids, the size of the pot depending on the amount of chili - all the way up to a 3 gal stock pot.

I used to use paper bags, but wasn't all that impressed.

For mulch, I'd look real hard at soaked newspaper (so if forms kind of a paper maché) cardboard, leaves, bark, and any kind of organic matter. Or, we've found here in the high desert that the woven polypropylene weed barrier is a fairly effective water retentive mulch - ugly, yes. But it works.

I don't know what the reason is for not using paper bags for steaming roasted peppers. I use white bakery or lunch bags which are safe for food contact anyway. You could also use aluminum foil, or - even safer - put them in a bowl or pot and cover with a lid.

Call your newspaper company and ask if they use soy ink. Most all do and it is fine for recycling in the garden. I have a mini-farm and gave up shredding newspapers - now it is just mail and printer paper, but nothing slick like ads or stiff highly colored grocery fly-ins that don't feel like newspaper - the comics are OK if your newspaper uses soy ink. I lay a good thickness of folded and overlapped wet newspapers around the newly planted and thoroughly watered plants, or just to the edge of where I've sowed seeds. It also goes in my walkways with leftover pieces of vinyl siding and rocks on top to keep the wind from whipping the papers away and to have a stiff surface to walk on when the soil is wet. I put soaker hoses under the newspapers next to the plants. When you add water over the top of the newspapers for the first weeks or so it eventually dries together to becomes paper mache! It works quite well and keeps the weeds at bay all season. In the late fall they just get ground up with the tiller and with some lime, sand, and fertilizer become "compost in place" ready for next spring's planting.

Nancy

When I roast peppers (in the oven) I do them on a cookie sheet lined with parchment.
After removing from the oven, I just put another piece of parchment over the top, then a couple of towels.

I use all sorts of newsprint, cardboard, magazine, etc. in my garden. BUT....I have raised beds and I'm only using them as a weed block in the pathways. I cover them with wood shavings to hold them down and improved the 'look'....not that anybody cares but me, but it also keeps them from becoming slick after a rain.

Deanna

The USDA does not recommend using paper bags because

1) They are made from various recycled materials and can even include such things as metal shavings. Toxic fumes may be emitted under heat.

2) Deleterious chemicals used in the manufacture may leach into the food.

3) They're a fire hazard.

4) Not to mention that since they aren't meant for cooking, they aren't always clean. Since they're meant for packaging not cooking, manufacturers, shippers and grocers make no effort to maintain sanitary conditions.

Basically this issue falls into the same category as using trash-can liners for brining. They're just not meant for food.

I roast my peppers in a foil-lined half-sheet pan. Then I bring up the foil to enclose the peppers in a packet and steam that way. The juices are where much of the flavor resides. This way none is lost.

Carol

I also found that I like using a kettle or bowl -- with lid -- for steaming so I can collect those juices..... nothings to be wasted except the blackened skin.

I've seen the same info Carol has. Doesn't worry me personally TOO much (I feel the amounts of anything problematic that would get into my peppers is small, esp. since I'll be REMOVING the skins). But aluminum foil turns out to work just as well, be less messy, and provide for easier cleanup (I'm one of those who lines the tray I'm roasting on with it, then folds it up to let the peppers sweat).

I don't think any of the caveats about using paper bags on food make it a problem to use them in mulch, however. Any of those toxins would be in such tiny amount that the chances of their getting into the soil and then into the food is pretty much non-existent (at any rate, there are a LOT dirtier, more toxic things in the garden you'd worry about first --- wild animal poop, for example).

And newspapers today use organic-based inks.

I use shredded paper (all my mom's confidential documents!) for mulch all the time & it works great. I recommend shredding it into strips, not cross-cuts pieces, or it blows away!

Z

Whee - It's always such a pleasure posting questions to this varied, and - I might add - professional group.

Thank you I appreciate being the recipient of your knowledge. I notice I do much more thinking about my food and where it comes from these day.

Learn something new every day.

Bejay

I also use newspaper and print for mulch, with a nice layer of alfalfa hay to keep it down, LOL.

I did try putting roasted peppers into a paper bag for steaming. Once. I put them into a bag and set the bag on the counter. Didn't think to set the stupid thing in the sink. I picked up the bag, the bottom fell out because the juice from the peppers had made it wet and I had hot roasted peppers all over my kitchen floor.

It was worse because my broiler is on the bottom of the oven and I have to lie on my stomach on my kitchen floor to use the broiler at all.

Sooooo.....that was my first and last attempt at roasting peppers. If I do it again I'll get Elery to roast them on the grill and wrap them in foil as Readinglady suggests!

Annie