I too own a mismatched collection of pots and pans. My favorites are the stainless steel pots with encapulated bottoms and good lids, the cast-iron frying pans (have made everything from deep-dish pizza, to cherry cobler in those pans, and are non-stick due to being very well seasoned), and my steel wok. If I can't make what I want in those pans, then it can't be made.
Of course for baking breads, cakes and such, a whole different set of rules exist. I have a ten-inch Kaiser spring form pan that is abosolutely indispensible to me. it makes the most phenominal cheesecakes and layerd cakes. Steel laof pans are good but need to be seasoned, just like carbon steel or cast iron. A good jelly-roll pan makes so much more than helly rolls.
And you can't beat LE' Crueset for baked beans (though my stainless stell and my slow cooker work well for those as well.
All in all, check out swap-meats and garage sales for the best deals in cast iron (look for Griswold or Lodge. There's a lot of cast-iron juck out there that is just worthless).
The biggest thing you can do for your kitchen is to treat info-mercial cookware like they're tryng to sell you cyanide in a vitamin pill. Don't buy it! Can you tell that I detest info-mercials?
A word of caution with even the highest quality tri-ply steel. Though it can be nearly stick free, and is nearly indistructable, if used wrong, things will stick like crazy and the cookware can be very hard to clean. But then, if you treat cast-iron improperly, well, do you own a sand-blaster
?
Seeeeeeya; Goodweed of the North