Adult Uncrustables

peanut butter and grape lube sandwich pockets for the grown-ups

Hello, clowns!

How’s the New Year treating you? So far, so good on this end of the newsletter. I’ve only had diarrhea once so far. I’m trying to make it a hat trick by the end of the week, but based off of what I document for you weekly, I think I’ll have it in the bag soon.

For this week’s edition of the newsletter, I decided to take a childhood staple and play chef by turning it “adult.”

You see, fine dining chefs get paid a lot of money to do this. There’s a restaurant here in Chicago called Next; one year the executive chef conceptualized a whole tasting menu based off the concept of “childhood.” I am sure they were able to charge you a whole month’s worth of grocery money for stuff like grilled cheese sandwiches ground into powder, then put in a capsule made out of tomato soup cellophane that you swallow whole or something.

Now, I specifically wanted to mess with the idea of a Smucker’s Uncrustable. Most of you are familiar with the simple crustless pocket sandwiches that are filled with peanut butter and jelly.

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are for babies, however. The crust is even removed because small children, aka babies, do not like them. So I thought to myself, what could I do to an Uncrustable that would make it “adult?”

I considered the word itself for a while. Lots of things are described as “adult,” like adult-sized clothing, for example.

And then it hit me: The most adult products you can get aren’t from the grocery store. They’re literally at businesses called “adult stores,” which carry all sorts of cool stuff like action-packed videos and some really interesting toys that you insert into some pretty creative places.

But the last time I checked, I don’t do much of my grocery shopping at that type of store. So I racked my brain to think of something I could in fact eat, that you can typically get at an adult store. Suddenly I had it.

Everyone welcome: The peanut butter and grape-flavored lube Uncrustable, aka, the Adult Uncrustable.

It turns out you really can get anything off of Amazon, because as soon as I typed the words “grape lube” into the search bar, I found exactly what I needed.

I found Climax brand water-based grape-flavored lube for about $9. It has a four star rating. But four stars out of five means that some people did not like this product for some reason. For fun, I looked up the one-star reviews and found this gem:

If you can’t read the screenshot above, it’s titled, “Contains Stevia! Not what you want on/in your genitals.”

The review goes on to say, “Scent is terrible and littered with natural plant based sugar (stevia). Lube just gets sticky, and not in a desirable way. Don’t imagine this is good for internal genitalia (imagine pouring stevia packets inside you…)”

I pictured that image, then immediately clicked “Add to cart.”

Next, the most important part of an Uncrustable is its form factor.

If you look carefully at the edges of an Uncrustable, it’s clear each one has been stamped shut by a machine, which does two things: One, it crimps the sandwich pocket firmly together, and two, it looks nice.

This is a trademark part of an Uncrustable, so in order to make mine as accurately as possible, I found a sandwich stamper tool and also added it to my Amazon digital shopping cart. I completed my purchase, and a few days later the sandwich stamper and the grape-flavored lube came delivered to my porch.

Somewhere out there is an Amazon fulfillment employee scratching their head, still haunted by my order.

It was time to assemble the sandwich.

I started by slathering two slices of white bread with Trader Joe’s natural peanut butter. You know it’s an adult peanut butter when you must inconveniently stir it each time you use it. Plus it’s from Trader Joe’s, which is a grocery store that only adults get excited about.

I put peanut butter on both slices because that’s how Uncrustables are made, if you’ve ever inspected one closely. The peanut butter insulates the bread from the jelly which would otherwise seep through. I’m not sure Smuckers envisioned this design to prevent KY Jelly from leaking out, however.

Next, I poured a generous amount of the grape-flavored lube on one slice.

It’s hard not to wonder whether or not someone has put this combination together before. If it involves the bedroom I wouldn’t put it past anyone, but I can’t imagine many people have ever fixed themselves a lunch quite like this. Except for maybe the greatest food writer in all of history, who was Socrates. Just kidding, I Punk’d you, it’s actually me!!!

Anyway, I flipped the other piece of bread on top and broke out my new tools.

The sandwich pocket cutter comes in two parts with no instructions, but I managed to figure out how to use it.

First, you use the round ring to cut the sandwich out from the center of the bread.

Then you nest the second tool inside of the cutter, push down firmly, and this crimps the pocket shut.

That’s it. I felt very proud of myself for figuring out this two-piece cooking gadget with no help. Hey, listen, my parents wanted me to be an engineer and now I can say I am one. Sort of. Probably not in the way they had hoped, but I’ll take all the little wins I can get.

Aside from a minor amount of peanut butter slop on a bit of the edge, the adult Uncrustable turned out pretty well, if you ask me.

Imagine the possibilities. I could fill two slices of bread with any of my favorite foods. Maybe I’ll have a dinner party serving nothing but homemade Uncrustables. I could serve some full of raw room temperature fish I retrieved from a dumpster, maybe a few crammed with fingernail clippings, and definitely some with cat food in them. It’d be like a game to see who throws up first and gets to go home early.

I took a big bite of the Adult Uncrustable and immediately lost my mind, but not in a good way, and it immediately began oozing all over my face in a very adult fashion.

Most Amazon reviewers hadn’t complained about the lube’s flavor, but that was easily the worst thing about it. I got hit front and center with an extreme bitterness that wouldn’t leave my mouth for well over 20 minutes. The culprit was likely the stevia sweetener, but because it persisted so long, it was hard to tell. For all I know, it could have been the potassium sorbate, polylysine, or hydroxyethyl methylcellulose. Silly me.

Davida heard me cursing in the kitchen, so naturally she had to come over and try a bit of the peanut butter and grape lube sandwich pocket. She took a small bite, gagged, and immediately spit it into the garbage.

I took a gander over the label on the lube. While the bottle does say “Just like good taste ultra-yummy kissable pleasure gel is sweet and sassy!” on it, the word “edible” doesn’t show up anywhere. Not that this ever stopped me, as you can see.

While I certainly was successful in making an adult version of an Uncrustable, it occurred to me just now that it doesn’t necessarily have to be edible.

Considering just how often I threaten to shove food up my ass on the newsletter, I think I just found the best thing to do it with.

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When you got up this morning, I bet “read stupid edition of newsletter about an Uncrustable full of grape-flavored lube” wasn’t on your checklist today. But now that you’ve gotten this far, you should goad your friends, family, and social media buddies into reading it:

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Thanks for reading, and as always, I love you all. Time to go get my balls smashed in on Elden Ring by a giant; we downloaded it a few weeks ago and I’m hooked.