I love food and spend most of my hours of the day looking forward to my next opportunity to eat. Some may consider that sad, I think of it as being gastronomically appreciative, every chance I get.

Breakfast is one of those meals I can pass on, me and toast have never been great friends and soggy cereal is basically one of my versions of hell on earth. In an effort to being better eating habits and stop eating my lunch at 11am, we bought a fancy blender and started experimenting.

This banana and mango smoothie is the most boring of them all, but I wanted to start with it as its our usual every-day choice. Delicious but no-fuss, packed with protein powder and banana to keep you full until its an appropriate time to eat lunch, its an easy winner.

We started off making this with plain yoghurt and trim milk, but have now tried to reduce our dairy and so have been substituting with almond milk instead (one day I’ll try making my own, until then laziness wins out and I have been trying different supermarket offerings). Taste-wise there isn’t much difference, apart from a slightly nutty flavour, which we both like. It does result in a slightly thinner smoothie that’s easier to drink (don’t worry, the banana still thickens it up).

Ingredients (serves 2):

• 2 ripe bananas
• 1/2 can of tinned mango (or roughly 1 fresh mango)
• 2 scoops of protein powder (ours is banana flavoured, but vanilla would work too)
• 1 1/2 cups of Almond Milk (or substitute)
• Large handful of ice cubes

Chop up the banana roughly. Chuck everything in the blender and whizz (very technical) till its smooth/at your desired consistency.

The mango and banana are a really nice pair of flavours, sweet enough without needing to add any honey and matched with the nutty almond milk. Cans of mango are super cheap and I love not having to rely on fresh fruit, so there’s always a couple of tins in my pantry (I know fresh fruit is way cooler, but it always just ends up going mouldy because I put off eating it until the last possible moment). We add in protein powder just to bulk up the other protein we get from our diet, and if you have any excellent recommendations for good protein powder options please let me know!

What about you, do you live for breakfast or struggle to remember it like me? What’s your favourite smoothie flavour combination?