Have your ice cream and keep the dish, too.

That’s the idea behind this weekend’s Bowl Benefit, an ice cream social hosted by Star Clay Works owner Daisy Anderson to support the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society as well as her friend Lee Ann Clark, who will run in the Nike Marathon for Women in San Francisco on Oct. 19.

The social is set for 6 to 8 p.m. Saturday at Crawford Square off Washington Street. Patrons, for $15 and $25, may purchase ice cream in a handmade clay bowl, which they can keep.

Clark is a member of the Jackson chapter of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training, a national organization that helps athletes train for endurance events and, in the process, raises money for the society. The Nike Marathon for Women is also a benefit for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Though the race focuses on women, men are welcome.

The San Francisco race will be the second marathon for Clark, 31, a labor-and-delivery nurse at River Region Medical Center. She ran in the Chicago marathon in October.

“Last year in Chicago, I saw lots of people wearing these purple shirts,” Clark said. “Turned out, they were from Team In Training.”

She liked the fact that the group provided training opportunities, as well as support for a good cause, so she joined the Jackson chapter.

“There will be about 20 of us from the Jackson group going to San Francisco,” Clark said.

She’s been training with the group in Jackson and on her own around Vicksburg and at the Vicksburg National Military Park and said the River City’s hills offer good training for the San Francisco race.

“They promise us no cable-car type climbs, but there will be some hills,” she said.

The route will begin and end in Golden Gate Park, pass through a bit of Chinatown and hit other San Francisco sights.

To compete as a member of Team in Training, Clark must raise $3,900.

“Seventy-five percent of that will go to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society to fund research to find a cure for blood cancers and also to help the families of those who have been diagnosed,” she said. “The other 25 percent goes to recruit more runners to raise more money.”

Some of that goes for advertising in Runner’s World and other national magazines for distance runners, triathletes and century, or 100-mile, bike riders.

More than $850 million has been raised for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society since 1988 by some 360,000 volunteer athletes, said the Team in Training Web site.

At Saturday’s social, ice cream will be sold in handmade clay bowls for $15 and $25. For children, ice cream cones will be sold for $3. Luvel will donate the ice cream.

Anderson, Clark and friend Amber Russell purchased the clay for the bowls at a discounted price from Killing Time Pottery in Raymond, and have been working for weeks to make them. Each takes about 10 minutes to shape; then, it has to dry, a process that can take two days to a week and a half – depending on the weather. It is then fired, glazed and fired again.

Clark is hoping for 75 to 100 visitors. “We’ll also have door prizes – little items and gift certificates donated by local merchants. They’ve been very generous.”