Well, I learned from the lovely women in my family, who would cook you a 5-star meal, curse you out, and give you blessings all at the same time, in the same breath. Never have I heard to season stainless steel cookware. Oils don't bind to stainless the same way they do with cast iron. Anytime oils start to stick to my All-Clad pans before I get the chance to clean them all with Barkeepers every few weeks, the pans start sticking worse. The oils become sort of like cementy-super glue, and in addition to making cooking in them a pain, they also look horrid. My skillets, however, never see a drop of soap, nor do my nonstick baking sheets. Those are seasoned to perfection, and like my grandmother would, I'll hospitalize anyone who puts my skillets or baking sheets in soap or the dishwasher haha.
99% of the time though, my cookware never sees the inside of the dishwasher, primarily because I don't like taking up the extra space. In the area a sauce pan would sit, I could put four or five plates, and honestly I like the aesthetic appeal of a dishwasher full of only "eating" dishes and utensils rather than a few large bulky items. I think the current Whirlpool has only seen one small frying pan since having it, but that was probably a day when I was just in a mood and didn't give a crap. I was pleased with how sparkly it came out though.
I think you'll like the normal Cascade packs, John. I honestly don't see that much of a difference in performance between them, the Complete, and the Platinum versions. I wonder really how many differences there actually are. The only small difference I do notice is the sparkle of the tub floor with Platinum, versus the few splotches of hazy residue with the regular, but the dishes are always sparkling and squeaky clean. I wonder if there would be a more noticeable difference if I stopped using rinse aid, but for my machine's well being, I'd rather not test it.
