Ronda Giangreco - 'The Gatherin Table' - April 5th

Time Tested Books is proud to welcome Ronda Giangreco, author of The Gathering Table: Defying MS with a Year of Pasta, Wine & Friends on Thursday, April 5th at 7 p.m.

With a foreword by renowned Napa Valley chef, Michael Chiarello, The Gathering Table is a humorous and heartfelt recollection of how the author, after being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, takes her life in her hands and faces down the disease by hosting 52 dinner parties in one year for over 120 guests.

On July 26^th, 2010, Ronda Giangreco, a healthy, vibrant woman just back from her latest adventure at a cooking school in Italy, was busy planning her next big dinner party. She and her husband had spent the day sampling wines in the Napa Valley with friends. Life was good.

One day later she was a disabled woman.

A diagnosis of sudden onset Multiple Sclerosis would be difficult for anyone to accept. But for Ronda and her husband it was a particularly cruel twist of fate. MS had killed his mother. Told she might not be able to walk for much longer, she asked herself the question, “Then where should I walk now?”

Her answer – to the kitchen! A dedicated “foodie,” she had always enjoyed cooking for friends and family. But when she made the audacious vow to her husband that she would create a big Italian feast every Sunday for a year as a means of warding off this disease, he thought she had lost her mind. With steaming plates of pasta she would attempt to triumph over Multiple Sclerosis one week at a time.

The story of her journey through the pain and confusion of Multiple Sclerosis, coupled with the healing balm of her lovingly prepared meals is told with humor, grace and heart wrenching honesty. The Gathering Table will have you running to the kitchen for your own remedy to life's challenges.

“The decision to host these dinner parties, which boosted our spirits and gave Michael and me something to look forward to, ended up being so much more,” Giangreco said. “Not only were the weekly meals important to us, but they became a source of companionship, camaraderie, and inspiration to others in the community, as well.”

A freelance writer and passionate chef, Ronda Giangreco has written features for magazines for the past twenty years, with her work appearing in Wine Country This Week, The Napa Marketplace Magazine, Looking Ahead, Home & Hearth, and Day Trips. Her unpublished novel, The Price of Glory, earned Giangreco a spot as a participant in the prestigious 2003 Napa Valley Writer’s Conference. She resides in Sonoma with her husband, Michael, and a dinner guest favorite, their standard poodle, Bella.

This event is FREE and everyone is invited.