You have family members who are Republicans. You love them very much, but know your own ideologies will be questioned if your left-leaning boss finds out that your family's blood runs red, not blue. To protect yourself you name-call. You insulted your NRA card-carrying cousin. You tell your anti-choice mother-in-law exactly what you think of her. But now it's time to show them that liberals love family too. It's time to show your grandfather, who doesn't think civil rights should be extended to our gay friends, that you love him, despite his despicable beliefs.

Before we can win the social war, we must win the culinary battles. We all know that the way to the Republican's heart is through their stomach (see statistics on the ratio of food consumed by Republicans compared to amounts consumed by Democrats). If we can convince our Republican family members that the solution to world peace is through sampling the foods of the world, we, as liberals will be that much closer to helping our red-state brothers and sisters understand the views held by the rest of the world of the United States. By helping our loved ones to develop an interest in the foods of the world, they may actually come to understand that the people of the world, in fact, do NOT hate freedom.

The challenge lies in helping your family to develop their lazy, sloppy joe-eating palates. Take sushi for example. How many of you have an aunt who fake-wretches at the mention of raw fish? Now, there is a solution to ease them into sampling this exotic food. That's right. Twinkie sushi. By calling the twinkies sushi and providing them with the highly-processed foodstuff they know best, we are one-step closer world diplomacy. When they ask, you can laugh and tell them, "there's no raw fish in this sushi."

TWO WEEKS LATER.....It worked for me. I mailed out a round of twinkie sushi care-packs to those I was hoping to convert (Twinkies have a shelf life to infinity and will never expire, making them a great gift to ship book-rate). Having eaten my gift, two cousins have already admitted that they made a terrific mistake in voting for George Bush in 2004.

Other exotic twinkie recipes include Twinkie Kebobs and Twinkie Tacos

**Disclaimer: Be warned Twinkies, whether served as sushi or straight from the package, if consumed in red-state quantities, may cause consumers to become radioactive.

And for the relatives who don't like twinkies, there's always Sushi Adornment