Five Weeknight Tomato Dishes

Juicy, acidic and sun-warmed sweet, a perfect summer tomato is a blessing. (A less perfect tomato is fine, if a little dull; a wan out-of-season tomato is to be avoided.) I eat tomatoes every day in August, sometimes at every meal. That’s why it’s Tomato Week here at Five Weeknight Dishes, with recipes that feature…

‘Birds Are My Eyesight’

Jim Wilson/The New York Times. On an average morning, Susan Glass can sit on the patio at her condominium complex in Saratoga, Calif., and identify as many as 15 different bird species by ear: a steller’s jay, an acorn woodpecker, an oak titmouse. For her, birding is more than a hobby. “Birds are my eyesight,”…

Caviar Gets Even More Refined

An Opulent New Way to Put an Egg On It These days, it seems that some restaurants will add a dollop of caviar to anything, from fried chicken to hamburgers, practically reducing the once-luxurious treat to a condiment. So it’s perhaps no surprise that chefs are turning their attention to something more rarefied than your…

How to Create a Groundbreaking Watch

Mr. Büsser had invited Mr. McDonnell to dinner because he couldn’t wait to show off the vintage Tiffany chronograph pocket watch that he had just bought. “I was so proud of it,” he recalled recently. But Mr. McDonnell was not impressed: “I could just see all its technical faults.” “Its precision is rubbish; all chronographs…

IJBOL Is In. LOL Is Out.

First there was LOL (“laugh out loud”), an acronym that first appeared in the 1980s and became the reigning shorthand online for what people found funny. Then came ROFL (“rolling on the floor laughing”), LMAO (“laughing my ass off”) and even nonverbal cues like smiling emojis. Still, most type these terms straight-faced, relegating them to…