MILWAUKEE, WI – After spending hours scrolling through Pinterest to find fun weekday breakfast ideas for her kids, Deborah McIntyre thought she stumbled upon what she had long been searching for – the perfect overnight oats recipe. The oats, from Sweet Mama Bakes, looked like everything McIntyre had ever wanted in a breakfast food; they were the perfect shade of beige, looked to be the ideal consistency of incredibly dense but also entirely liquid, and fit perfectly inside a mason jar. Instead, McIntyre was met with an “affront to culinary and journalistic integrity” standing between her and the recipe.

“It was awful,” McIntyre said, visibly shaking with rage. “I opened her website, expecting to see the recipe right there, but no. She just wrote a ten-page essay about her stupid freaking life.” The webpage in question was Sweet Mama Bakes’ blog post preceding the recipe, detailing her emotional journey to perfecting her overnight oats recipe as a way to cope with her youngest son’s premature death.

Rachel Barker, the blogger behind Sweet Mama Bakes, started the blog to chronicle her adventures in the kitchen with her children, Reggie, Rosie, and Reighleigh. After the tragic loss of her eldest child, Sweet Mama Bakes played a major role in Barker’s healing process. “When Reggie lost his life to a freak instant oatmeal/quick-drying cement mishap, I was so lost,” she explained. “Sharing my love of cooking finally gave me something to care about again when I thought I had nothing to live for.” Barker credits the community she has created through Sweet Mama Bakes with giving her the freedom to forgive herself for keeping a container of oatmeal so close to her tub of cement. “No one cares about this garbage,” McIntyre commented on the original post. “Her kid ate cement one time, and she can’t even get over it long enough to write one fucking recipe?”

In an effort to put the traumatic experience of having to read a blog post behind her, McIntyre decided to scroll to the bottom of the page with her eyes closed. At the end of the post was a text box labeled “Reggie’s Favorite Overnight Oats,” with the ingredients and instructions written out concisely. “Put oats in jar,” the recipe read. “Leave overnight.”