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Don't forget that - I think - the rules regarding carrying on liquids are still in place, meaning you have to pack your olive oil and vinegar and wine in your checked baggage, which makes me a bit nervous...

Maybe I'm wrong?

Nope, you're right. Ugh, olive oil all over your clothes...

it's okay to plan ahead and take some extra touch ziplock bags to put things in. just remember to let the air before sealing.

I always try to bring food home from trips overseas. I brought Durian paste back from Malaysia, coffee from Costa Rica and preserves from England. My rule is to stuff it in your suitcase and act completely ignorant if you get pulled over in customs.

Sometimes I am such an airhead that I COMPLETELY forget what I packed in my suitcase, like that time on the way back from Hungary when I forgot 3 pounds of dried sausage in there. Whoops! (It was delicious.)

Seriously, though - I think the worst that would really happen is that it gets taken away and the customs official gets to eat it.

Be careful going the other direction too. I bought some duty-free alcohol at the airport (I think it was Atlanta?) on my way out because they didn't sell that variety in Finland. They gave it to me when I boarded, so I never had a chance to put it in my checked bag. When I tried to take it through Amsterdam, they didn't want to let me! My checked bags were long gone and they wanted to charge me 250 euros to check my backpack with the liquor.

Not because it was liquid, but because it wasn't purchased in the EU! If I had told the guy "Oh I bought it here at that duty-free liquor store around the corner!" it would have been fine. Fortunately I had never broken the duty-free seal so eventually they let me keep it...

The first time I brought coffee from Indonesia, my suitcase reeked of coffee I thought I was going to be arrested at customs but it turned out that roasted coffee is fine to bring to the US.

I was told that if the food is processed and industrially packaged it is fine to bring through customs.

I recently traveled to Alaska, via Vancouver and cruise ship. We kept having to declare food because we had dry veggies and fruit to snack on for the flight and, naturally, we brought smoked salmon home with us. Going through customs at JFK in New York we were passed through a couple of agents in a very passing-the-buck kind of way, then a lady took us over to a corridor, asked us what we had, we told her smoked salmon in jars, and she let us go. That's my experience with animal products.

I just flew back from California with about 30lb (about 12 bottles) of beer, and not a single one broke. It wasn't even a hard suitcase.. just the beers inside a soft cooler, wrapped in towels and my clothes. Not saying it's illegal, just a little dangerous but nothing happened. If you do bring home liquids, it's probably smart to at least put them in a plastic bag, just in case.

I used to wrap my French cheese in clothing and stick it in the middle of my luggage and keep my fingers crossed that nobody checked it. I have had cheese confiscated before. Have the rules changed?

If you are worried about your liquids containers breaking in your (checked, of course) suitcase, consider shipping them home. UPS or any other place will have proper boxes and insulating materials, and many of them guarantee safe arrival if you let them pack it for you.

I still have a can of oil that I brought back from Italy about 10yrs ago, I wanted it for the packaging.

I also used to take American cheese and hamburger buns to Italy where I would have "American white trash hamburger night" with my Italian friends. They loved that awful cheese!