Hey! Good to see you. How are things? Bad? Well, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: you need to try overnight oats.

In case you don’t subscribe to Real Simple or have a Pinterest account, I’ll fill you in on this breakfast life hack one more time, my friend. All you have to do is put oats in a container, cover them with milk, put the container in the fridge, and get ready to witness magic the next morning—I’m talking oats, softened.

Maybe you throw some chia seeds in there. Maybe you toss in some nuts. If you want flax seeds, that’s fine. The only rule of overnight oats is that there are no rules, except that you have to use jam jars and arrange banana slices on top in a circle.

Do you feel rushed in the morning? Make overnight oats to cut your breakfast-prep time to zero. Feeling hungry again at 11:30 A.M.? People who eat English muffins with butter get hungry at 11:30 A.M. Overnight oats are so full of soluble fibre, one serving fuels me till dinner, which is typically a plate of Wasa crackers with a side of gravel.

Overnight oats are a breakfast for grownups who get things done. They’re a meal in a cup for adults who do their mise en place on Friday, check it on Saturday, and, finally, artfully assemble their grain, liquid source, and mix-ins on Sunday. Et voilà.

Nobody wants breakfast soup, so watch your ratios. It’s two parts milk to one part grain, eighteen to twenty per cent of which can be subbed out for fruit, nuts, or toasted coconut. Like to keep it loose? Add a little extra milk to those oats. Prefer it thick? Stir in some Greek yogurt. Want to push a whole pear in there, so it’s like a mountaintop surging through the clouds with a little flagpole on top? Hey, why not? They’re your freaky oats, your freaky style.

Make enough servings on Sunday to last you the week. Then, when you wake up: cold porridge, ready to please you.

What about cream of wheat? Sorry—cream of no. That takes two minutes and thirty seconds to cook that we just don’t have.

Couldn’t you make yogurt parfaits in advance? One, the parfait is a foul relic of the nineties. And, two, absolutely not.

Isn’t pouring Puffins cereal and milk into a bowl kind of the same as overnight oats, except it’s crunchier and actually takes no time to prepare? Stop asking me these questions, get in the van, and take a journey with me to Muesliville.

For the uninitiated, I am referring to muesli, the original overnight oats, created in the nineteen-hundreds by a Swiss physician named Maximilian Bircher-Benner, who treated tuberculosis with a mixture of oats, nuts, and yogurt that steeped overnight. The word “muesli” means “puree” or “mashup,” which is what I’ll do to your bagel slicer unless you get with my heart-healthy breakfast program.

All this is to say, yes, you do need to eat overnight oats, not only because it is required by me but also because of science. Bon appétit.