My wife never mentioned this, but something I’ve noticed about myself. We split cooking, though my wife does more than I do. We both bake, but she also does more of that. One difference I have noticed is that when I cook something, I always wind up using a lot more stuff – not ingredients, but cooking things: More pots and pans, more bowls to hold chopped or mixed ingredients to add later, more utensils, etc. than my wife will use for a similar dish (like a stew or casserole). One thing I do is with eggs. If I’m adding a raw egg to a dish, I will break the egg into a small bowl first. I do this because once (only once!) I broke an egg directly into a cake I was making and it was bad – could tell from the discolored yolk and terrible smell. I had to discard all of what I had already put in the bowl and start again. So, now I break the egg(s) first into a separate bowl and then if OK (and – additional advantage – remove any shell fragments first) then it goes into the mixing bowl.
So is this just me? Do other men who cook (not barbecue – not counting that) wind up using more stuff? Is it my obsessive-compulsive nature? Oh, when I asked my wife, she replied, “Sure, any time you cook, there’s always more bowls, pots, and utensils on the counter than when I cook.” She doesn’t complain though, because I clean the stuff up when done