I drink my coffee with coconut milk, and it is delicious. But sometimes I want to, you know, put other stuff in it. Since it is halo-halo season, pinipig is readily available. However, it is more often of the puffed sort, instead of the authentic pounded rice.
When I want some grown-up and Filipino cereal, I mix it all together: kape, gata, pinipig and ripe mangga. Add some mascobado sugar and you have a nom-nom calorie bomb. My favorite part of making this snack is buying the coconut.
I especially like watching coconuts being split in half. Coconut-crackers always do it with such skill and confidence, like they have been doing it since infancy. You cannot help but think: "That is how a job ought to be done!". All model citizens, they are.
This particular merchant had a stone worktop with a channel carved on it-- like a little tributary-- to lead the juice into a waste bucket.
People probably used to take them home in the emptied-out shells. If that seems messy, try to take a reusable container with you, to spare yourself from having to take a plastic bag home.
