The Gathering Table: Defying Multiple Sclerosis With a Year of Pasta, Wine & Friends

Just back from her latest adventure at a cooking school in Italy, Ronda Giangreco was a healthy, vibrant woman 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! As an avowed “foodie”, she had always found her joy in front of a stove. But when she made the audacious vow to her husband that she would create a big Italian feast every Sunday night for an entire year as a means of warding off this disease, he thought she had lost her mind. It began with a simple idea. What if she tried to cook a meal for eight people every Sunday throughout 2010? With steaming plates of pasta she would attempt to triumph over Multiple Sclerosis one week at a time. She began by sending out an email invitation to all of her friends and soon added to the guest list scores of new people anxious to join in the fun. Each week the first six who accepted the invitation would join them for an evening of laughter, good food and plenty of great wine. They never orchestrated the mix of people, allowing fate to create interesting “pairings” of dinner guests. Over the course of fifty-two weeks, they heard stories that made them weak with laughter and others that brought tears to their eyes. And they ate...mountains of gnocchi, meatballs and her guest's favorite: homemade ricotta with fresh-baked bread. 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 heartwrenching honesty. This book will have you running to the kitchen for your own remedy to life's challenges. As the famous chef, Michael Chiarello, Ronda's cheerleader and inspiration for her meals suggests, "Take this book and learn from the gifts she is sharing. Commit one or fifty-two days with those you love and start your legacy now."