Mixed Berry and Vanilla Smoothie

This Mixed Berry and Vanilla Smoothie is the perfect post workout pick me up or quick lunch. Fruity and sweet, it’s a favourite in my house that I make almost every day!

Hiya guys, how are you doing? Last week was pretty up and down for me. I had been doing a pretty good job of blocking everything negative out and just focusing on work. But I got a little bit down about not being able to see my family last week.

No matter how hard it is now, brighter days are coming and this will be over one day. Then we can hug our families again. We just have to carry on a bit longer.

Today I have a seriously delicious smoothie recipe to share with you all: Mixed Berry and Vanilla. Yep, more mixed berries! I’ve just been loving berries so much recently! When I first started making this smoothie and sharing it on IG stories, I just knew I had to properly measure everything and share it with you all!

I love to play around with different fruit in my smoothies and this Mixed Berry and Vanilla version came out of me experimenting. My husband couldn’t get fresh berries on one of his trips to the supermarket, so he bought me a frozen mixed berry mixture.

My berry medley mixture has got strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and blackcurrants in it, but you can use whatever mixture of berries you want.

Smoothies are so quick and easy to make, they’re the perfect quick lunch or a pick me up after a workout. I love the sweetness from the berries mixed with the vanilla in this smoothie. Vanilla brings extra sweetness out of the berries and lifts the whole smoothie.

I must have made this Mixed Berry and Vanilla Smoothie 20 times in recent weeks and I’ve tried it with different milks too. I’ve used normal skimmed milk, oat milk and soy milk and it tastes delicious with all of them. I have added 1tbsp of oats a few times to get an extra little hit of fibre too.

Since last week, I’ve been in the process of switching from dairy milk to non dairy milk. For years I’ve not felt great after having milk, but I wasn’t adding up all the dots and realising it was milk. Because I have quite a few chronic health issues, I find it confusing sometimes to work out what is causing things. It actually came about during isolation where I’ve found myself having 2 coffees a day and a smoothie.

I can have a little bit of dairy milk, but I worked out I was having about 400ml a day and I felt awful. I had stomach cramps, my skin came up in massive cystic acne, I was bloated and just felt generally bleurgh.

I’ve been going through a journey with my skin in the last 6 months. It finally twigged that it could be milk after I started to see an improvement with my antibiotics and was using skincare that I’ve used for years and know works for me. However, it still would come up with about 5 new cystic spots a night. Last week was breaking point. I had about 14 cystic spots on my chin and it hurt to move my mouth. I was almost in tears. The next day I cut milk out and within 3 days all the cystic spots had gone.

Next came finding a non dairy milk I actually like the taste of and can make coffee with. I turned to my IG story family and they all said to try Oatly Barista. Hubby picked some up with the food shopping and I’m converted! It’s really delicious in coffee, be that hot or iced coffee. Best of all? My skin has stayed calmer and so has my stomach. No bloating or cramps.

I will also be trying Aldi’s Lacto free milk as my friends says it’s nice too!

What smoothie flavours are you loving right now? I’m always looking for new flavour combinations!