Laughed at this because I did the exact same thing last month and felt like a total idiot standing in my kitchen. Spent years telling myself fresh was always better and then a cheap bag of frozen peas and carrots shut me right up. My kid actually asked why the veggies tasted better that night and I had to lie and say it was the butter. Turns out frozen stuff gets picked and frozen fast so it keeps more of the good stuff than fresh that sat on a truck for a week. The real kicker is I paid three bucks for fresh broccoli that went limp in my fridge while the frozen bag just sat there waiting for me. So yeah, you probably have been wasting money, and so have I, which hurts to admit.

Feeler gauges on door gaps is genius, nobody ever tells you that trick.

That grease pot thing is real. My setup was a Jetboil and a GSI kit, all the bells and whistles, then I grabbed a $9 pot at a restaurant supply place off Airport Blvd and never looked back. Boils water in like 2 minutes and nests inside my mug. Fancy gear is mostly marketing once you stop caring about looking cool at camp. The cheap stuff just works and you don't cry when you dent it.