It's coming!

Can I tell you how very excited I am about this year's Blogathon?

The Monsters and I have a very ambitious day planned, and we're deep in the throes of selecting the dishes we are cooking for our Chef's Tasting Menu - twelve courses, from Amuse Bouche through Dessert, including dishes originated by a couple of my favorite chefs!

I'm especially excited to have reverse engineered a fantastic appetizer I had recently at Iron Chef Michael Symon's Roast in Detroit, and I'll be presenting a dish or two from one of my favorite spots, Evans Street Station in Tecumseh, MI. I'm not going to tell you about them yet...but one of them includes a certain popular cured pork product...and it's heavenly.

We're knocking ourselves out to put together a great 24-hour food and blog marathon to benefit the National Kidney Foundation and support their very vital research.

Applause is really lovely, but I'd be terribly grateful if you could scrounge around in your couch cusions, car seats and winter coat pockets, and throw a little money, too. If you can't throw money, I'd be very appreciative if you visited The Chef's Table between 9AM EDT on Saturday, July 25th and 9AM EDT on Sunday, July 26th to leave a comment or two and cheer me and my merry band of eating machines on!