Quarantine Continues | May, 2020

Time for the May recap! Still staying at home, mostly, with a couple biking trips around town and one short excursion up to wine country, all very carefully done with only remote hiking and curbside pickups even though restaurants had already reopened in Sonoma. Otherwise, it was all about videochat gatherings, gourmet quarantine, and sewing projects.

Weekly happy hour

Sewing project: cross-back apron! And ice cream project: bourbon vanilla with walnut butter candy.

Craft day with Yauhaus in Los Angeles, Tiffany in Sydney, guest appearance from Jess and baby Apollo in SF, and Connie in Irvine. Actually our Old Ladies’ Knitting Club has always been remote across multiple cities!

Meanwhile Alex was having a cooking club with his friends on the East Coast. Handmade gnocci!

Got our knives sharpened by Steph’s husband John and picked up some of her garden mint and these beautiful cookies too!

Finished aprons! A:

And B:

Weekly lunch date.

Giant Levain-inspired cookies.

Cinco de Mayo

Our monthly Office of Accountability meeting.

Ice cream truck makes its rounds. And I found Lindsey on the sidewalk.

We have an abundance of oregano in our garden. Let me know if you need some dried oregano! I have another mini container’s worth ready to go.

Weekly chats with Talya in Berlin.

Lean in with three of our mini members.

Colorful food and colorful bouquets from the garden.

Happy hour with Accountability.

Happy Birthday Theresa!

Made lasagna from scratch.

And then made donuts from scratch.

Had some visitors come pick up donuts.

Matchy matchy, weekly chat with Whitney.

Burger buns from scratch.

Many different taco concoctions. And burger buns in action.

We love all the purple veggies from Imperfect Foods. 

Watched an inspiring chat about weddings in the Covid age. with Elaine Welteroth and Priya Parker.

Basic, delicious Asian meals.

Received our first round of film back from the lab for our Isolayered project! We each photographed a roll film and then passed it along to another person to photograph double exposures over it. Then we had a little virtual viewing party to go over it all together.

Happy Birthday Whitney! Congrats on getting sworn in to the NY Bar!

We are pretending to be in the before times. With our JetBlue snack pack courtesy of Imperfect Foods, haha.

Our first takeout meal of the whole quarantine! From Rich Table. It was ok. There’s really no good way to reheat steak.

Life changing development! We got a washer & dryer! No more coin-op washing! Plus, weekly chat with Lauren in Ohio.

I made a bunch of hair ties and hair bows from my leftover linen fabric, but then I lost momentum to actually post them and sell them as intended. Feel free to let me know if you’d like to buy one.

Then, the weekend we were supposed to be camping in Yosemite with our hard-won camping reservations, we decided to strike up our tent in the living room and camp indoors.

Many, many s’mores variations all week.

Livestreaming construction from outside our window. And trying out a virtual photoshoot with Lindsey for our second round of Isolayered!

Seafood stew. And more tacos.

Scallion flower rolls from scratch.

Paint club returns! With a beautiful still life by Stephanie that we could all draw from.

Ongoing pickle bar.

CAAMFest goes online, with a virtual surprise reunion of the cast from Saving Face by director Alice Wu.

Monthly #annatifftime chat.

A bike trip to the other end of San Francisco.

Montreal-style bagels from scratch.

Film swaps with Meg and Lindsey for Isolayered.

I made egg salad sandwiches for our very first social-distanced picnic. Including milk bread from scratch.

Socially distant.

Instant Pot ribs.

Finally acquired dumbells! From my brother. They’re still sold out everywhere. This helped me with my May goal of completing a Nike Fitness Club program. Although I completed it a week late.

The Knot California’s fall edition! Featuring Carolyn and Cynthia’s wedding.

Eating more purple things. With homemade chili.

Also, chawanmushi.

Vanilla bean + cookie dough ice cream!

Discussing our Isolayered submission to a local gallery!

Got new starters for our garden! Also, our lavender has taken over.

The Black Lives Matter protests start to supersede Coronavirus news, and everything shifts. Instead of food and crafts, I start spending all my time on antiracism readings and discussions, which will carry through to June. A lot of this work is behind the scenes rather than photogenic, but it’s necessary and important and is where I’m planning to continue regularly spending my time and energy.

We used to visit Cerf Club the last Friday of each month, but since they’ve shut down Alex had the foresight to purchase some bottles of their wine so we could have it for Happy Hour on this last Friday instead.

And finally, at the very end of May, in celebration of our one-year anniversary, Alex and I ventured up to Sonoma for some hiking and a couple special curbside pickups.

Hiking at Bothe-Napa. Not many people, and we and most other people wore masks every time we did see someone approaching.

Wine club pickup from Reeve. They gave us some sampler glasses and let us walk around the property while they prepped our order.

And finally, a full meal from SingleThread, the three-star Michelin restaurant where we were supposed to dine in October, but that got cancelled due to the fires in the area at the time. Someday, someday we’ll come back for the full SingleThread experience.

But for now, their take-home meals are incredibly well done, as you’d expect. Everything is still beautifully made and comes with perfect instructions on how to reheat the food. Would definitely recommend.

Grateful for health and safety and another incredibly full month.

Anna Wu is a wedding and portrait photographer based in San Francisco. She compulsively documents and blogs all of her daily adventures, even in quarantine. Follow her on instagram and view more of her professional work at annawu.com.