Cook white rice in a rice cooker but instead of water, use a canned soup. Flavor of the soup gets into the rice. A few minutes of prep and walk away.

That's a great point. Thank you

Thank you for the idea. However, it looks like my device isn't supported. Also, not really looking to go that far. Would doing things like disabling search and location history be effective at all? Other simple steps?

An ecoflow battery generator. Granted, it's a small-ish one but I got this itch to purchase one after seeing one in action while car camping ("I can use my hot water kettle while camping, how cool!") and when our city was warning us about widespread power outages from an upcoming winter storm ("to keep our devices powered up").

That's a great idea. Unfortunately my work laptop is locked down and I'm not able to install any of my own software to it

Thanks so much everyone for your input. I ended up with a KYY K3. There was a lightning deal for it on Amazon for ~$90. It showed up yesterday evening and so far, it works just fine for what I need it to do. I'm certain it will help my productivity while working away from the office or my home set up.

Https://a.co/d/dFBQNzT

As an engineer, this warms my heart (and the resulting soup/rice mixture warms my tummy).

I would add tires to your list. Car tires, bike tires...