In Reply to: chilli posted by baliterry on Thursday, 24. September 2009 at 14:13 Bali Time:
The good news is that the saffron is highly unlikely to be genuine, when it comes to saffron, if it's too cheap to be real, then it isn't :)
If the chilli contained seeds then there's your answer - dried chilli seeds are very easy to grow plants from, I've successfully grown seedlings from really old dried crusty seeds that I was certain wouldn't work, but they did!
Customs are doing the right thing by making sure that these plants can't inadventantly pass on any diseases :)
Dried Long pepper is a little different in that it can't be cultivated from the catkin, so it's normally fine to import - same goes with vanilla beans (much cheaper than in Aus) - I haven't had any issues bringing these back at all, and our pantry loves us for it!
Mmmn... creme brulee!