If you live around here, I urge you to close the cookbook, pour the cats an extra bowl of food in the morning, and head out to eat on Thursday for the annual Dine out for Life day in D.C. (and its surrounding suburbs).

The concept is that you get a nice restaurant meal at one of 150 or so participating eateries and the restaurants donate a portion of their receipts for the night to charity. Most restaurants that take part donate a quarter of their proceeds. Others, which are noted on the site, donate a third, half, or even all the money they make tomorrow night.

In the D.C. area, the charity that benefits from the restaurant proceeds is Food and Friends, for whom I knit a couple of scarves earlier this year. Food and Friends delivers cooked meals and groceries and provides nutritional counseling to nearly 1,250 people every month who are living with life-threatening illnesses like cancer and HIV. They don’t ask clients for insurance. They don’t ask them to pass a means test. And they do it all for free, which means they need to raise a butt-load of money in order to keep operating. This is particularly true in D.C. where we have a large number of HIV and cancer cases.

Other cities — from New Haven to Philadelphia — around the country also take part in Dining out for Life on different days throughout the year. If you live elsewhere and you’re interested, I’d urge you to click here to check out the site and see when your local event is. If you live in D.C., I suggest you call up a bunch of friends and go out to eat at a participating restaurant. Expect to wait in line for a while if you don’t make a reservation, but remember that you’re doing it for charity.