The fizzy, refreshing band Lemonade, used to live in the Bay Area but these days, they call Brooklyn home. Last week, for "Tune in an Afternoon," a reoccurring series conceived by the folks at XLR8R TV, the sample-happy trio, self-described fans of popular television eats-seekers like Anthony "This Aging Rocker's Physique and These Expensive Boots Do Not Hide The Fact I am a Huge Unrepentant Dork" Bourdain and Andrew "I'm Not As Funny As Tony and It's Actually A Little Disturbing When I Force Myself To Eat Weird Stuff" Zimmern, crafted a track appropriate to their quaffable namesake in a matter of hours. With a skimpy budget of 40 bucks in hand, the band went shopping for edible inspiration at Deluxe Food Market on Elizabeth St. in New York City's Chinatown, intending, with the typical enterprising thrift of savvy musician dudes, to fashion both music and mid-day sustenance from their purchases.

Food and music are not strangers. Famously, during an interlude of "Clara," the 12-minute center-piece of Scott Walker's The Drift (2006), a pulsing, jarring horror show of a record, a percussionist is captured vigorously and somewhat rhythmically punching away at a side of beef. The result: dull, wince-worthy thuds, fleshy and full yet weak, an icky almost carnal sound infinitely more gruesome than anything on A Chance to Cut Is A Chance To Cure, Matmos' 2001 album of accessible electronica derived entirely from the recorded saws and squishes of various plastic surgery procedures.

While music made from sounds associated with food, or at least those emanating, with human interference, from things that, properly prepared, could become food (30th Century Man doesn't tell us if Walker or any of his studio minions elected to barbecue the pummeled hunk of cow once it had been thoroughly tenderized) may not be untravelled terrain (I am not knowledgeable enough about electronic music to even bother pretending that there is or is not a chronicled history of such efforts), Lemonade's off-the-cuff July 14 experiment gave me some fresh perspective on the ways we process, enjoy, and dissect food and music.

When we cook a meal, we transform the properties of once-living flesh or vegetable matter to ready them for consumption, rendering them palatable to our tastes and (hopefully) acceptable to our digestive systems. When it hits the table, food is for the most part appraised and enjoyed via four of the five senses: taste (naturally), smell (not far removed), sight, and touch. We may, at times, like hearing the food we're eating -- a bowl of Rice Krispies, shards of papadum, meat sputtering on the grill, even the crackling overture of a super burrito shedding its silver foil skin -- but that sense is, at least for me, not necessarily crucial to pleasurable, or at least engaged eating, the sort of experience capable of triggering memories and emotions. Does food that tastes good often sound good as well? Carpaccio hacked up through mounds of compression and some slithery echo might not sound as lovely as it will taste. Then again, drop a few hushpuppies in a vat of bubbling oil, hold your nose, close your eyes (don't do this before you get within spitting distance of the pot), and tell me that doesn't sound as if it won't deliciously call forth a crashing wave of delirious nostalgia for river-side catfish feeds of days long past and so on.

Whether or not the by-product of Lemonade's music-making was particularly yummy, it's exciting and new to hear food, and only hear it, though the video does obviously visually link the band's process to their final product, a song. Using a cheap microphone and proletariate software, the band documents the pressing of garlic, the popping of a cava bottle, eggs boiling, olive oil sprayed from a can, and, goofily, the open-palmed slapping of a fish, harnessing typical supper-time noises and manipulating them (along with samples from a steel drum platter and some pre-prepared synths) in an improvised recipe for an organic musical composition: "Fish Clap," an uptempo, dish-rattling instrumental ditty, cartoonish, effervescent swirls of kitchen activity in 4/4 with a whiff of the kind of mixer-chewing mayhem Black Dice usually employs to more unsettling ends.

In case the descriptives peppering this tract haven't made it quite clear, the sorts of words critics frequently abuse in reviewing music often work with regard to food and drink too. A mad dash through a few recent Pitchfork reviews reveals that beats, melodies, riffs, tones, and vibes can be construed as fat, rubbery, foamy, gritty, and fluid, just like eats. In the end, writers trying to make sense of whatever creations they've elected to reflect upon have the same tools at their disposal, and there are naturally huge overlaps in the applications of their meanings. That doesn't explain why so many restaurant reviews come off as just a touch less antiseptic than sanitation score reports written by a low-wattage Hemingway sitting down to his Royal portable typewriter after a trip to The Vapor Room.

Amid billowing black stove-staining clouds of digression, I suppose what I'm really coming to, here at the end of this roundabout stew-stirring, is another question, one stretching a bit beyond the scope of the original subject: if food, in the right hands, with the right software, can become music, can music, in a listener's right frame of mind, feel, not literally, of course, but metaphorically, like food?

Certain sounds even evoke specific tastes for me. For example, the vibrato-drenched electric guitar commonly used in old-school surf music lends a silvery, watery quality to whatever it graces; hearing the effect makes me thirsty and apt to think about Coca-Cola in little glass bottles, frozen technicolor drinks churning away in glass-and-metal machines in gas stations, and Gatorade -- sweet refreshments for slaking thirst and cooling down -- as well as deuce coupes and suntan lotion. If sounds packed into songs have flavors, the end results can be dishes, some nourishing, some junky, some deceptively simple, and others triumphs of high art and affectation. To conclude, trying to avoid tunes with explicitly food-oriented lyrics (Sadly, no Dead Prez), because that's really a whole other topic, I've selected, in Rob Gordon-esque fashion, my Top 5 Most Delicious-Sounding Tracks of All Time If They Were Actually Dishes, In A Meal:

1. "Can't Come In" by The Congos off Heart of the Congos -- A very small bowl of intense, almost overwhelming, practically hallucinogenic elixir broth made from about a thousand different tiny spiny slippery sea creature things deftly simmered, frantically stirred, and infused with a literal ton of Scotch bonnets.
2. "Small Hours" by John Martyn off One World -- A cool little lemon-laced salad of sliced English cucumber and some sort of pickled fish, maybe herring.
3. "The Weight" by The Band off Music From Big Pink -- An Arkansas-style poutine, with barbecue sauce substituted for brown gravy.
4. "Tangerine" by Led Zeppelin off Led Zeppelin III -- A luscious royal layer-cake, decadent, towering, frosted with ambrosia (for the gods, of course) and topped with icing in arena light hues.
5. "Turiya and Ramakrishna" by Alice Coltrane off Ptah The El Daoud -- An endless cup of perfect espresso, covered in celestial mounds of spiced cream.

Good morning, brunchers! What's in your glass? Let's see: mimosa, mimosa, bloody Mary, screwdriver, mimosa, Calistoga with lime, bloody Mary, and just coffee for you, thanks.

Oh, has it come to this? Can we not break out of the orange-juice rut, spread our wings and flap a little, veer a little to the right or left in our quest for a morning pick-me-up that lets you down easy. Personally, I like to be able to recall my name and address (and yours) post-frittata, rather than ending up in the Jacuzzi at 5pm with three pairs of new shoes and no idea how I got there.

The LA Coffee Mill, très chic in Silverlake, does a very fabulous morning mojito, made with muddled mint and lime in a a base of chilled green tea, topped with a splash of soda water. It's tangy and refreshing, very post-Pilates. But what if you want something a little more lush, a little more beignet-friendly? Welcome to your new favorite brunch drink: white peach Meyer lemonade.

Now Meyer lemons, which really should be growing in your backyard if you have one, and in your friends' backyards if not, make the most flagrantly, fragrantly delicious lemonade.

But with white peaches and nectarines in full sugary swing now, you can one-up even Meyer lemonade by adding a little pale and luscious peach puree, turning your lemonade into a coral-colored quaff even better than a Bellini.

Anytime you buy white-fleshed stone fruit, you know a few of these dainty little princesses are going to get bruised on the way home. But hard knocks don't matter to a puree. Pit your peaches and throw them in the blender or food processor. (Or just thwap the heck out of them with a potato masher.) Drip the puree through a fine-mesh strainer into your lemonade, so you get all the lovely tequila-sunrise color with none of the skin.

A very good trick, when you have the time, is to skin off all that aromatic rind and infuse it into a sugar-water syrup. Use this lemony-sweet syrup to sweeten fresh lemon juice to taste. Finish with just enough water, sparkling or still, to make it drinkable over ice.

Even better, try rubbing a few heads of fresh lavender into your sugar, or infuse the blossoms into your lemon-rind syrup. If you're really lucky, all this—Meyer lemons, lavender, white peaches—could come from your own garden right now. Lavender white peach Meyer lemonade: effete, yes, but oh, oh, so good.

White Peach Lemonade

Ingredients:

2/3 cup water
1/3 cup sugar, or to taste
1 tablespoon lavender flowers, optional
1 tablespoon honey, or to taste
3 to 4 lemons
2 to 3 white peaches or nectarines, pitted and chopped
Water

Preparation:

1. Peel off the rind of your lemons in long strips. In a small saucepan over medium heat, dissolve sugar in water. When sugar is dissolved, add lemon rinds and lavender flowers, if using. Bring to a slow simmer and let bubble gently for 5 minutes.

2. Remove from heat and let cool. Meanwhile, juice your lemons. When syrup is cool, strain and add 3 tablespoons to lemon juice. (You can always add more later).

3. Puree peach chunks, honey, and lemon juice mixture in a food processor or blender. Pour through a fine-mesh strainer into a pitcher.

4. Add water until it's dilute enough to drink. Add more honey or lemon syrup as needed. Serve over ice.

At some point in his motivational speaking career, Dale Carnegie uttered the famous, if misguided words:

"When fate hands you a lemon, make lemonade."

The fault is not so much in the sentiment-- making lemonade out of lemons is, naturally, a rather positive, productive activity. What bothers me is the underlying belief that there is something inherently unpleasant about this citrus fruit. Carnegie was not alone in his thinking. Used car salesmen have given the lemon a bad name over the years, associating them as they do with automobiles that are slick and shiny on the outside, but of dubious dependability under the hood, which is all rather pot vs. kettle when one stops long enough to think about it.

All I know is this-- Carnegie's family certainly didn't hail from a sunny, Mediterranean clime, or he would never have said it. He might instead have related his comment to the Germans or the idea of an eight-hour work day. When fate hands you a German... you can fill in the rest.

Of course, Carnegie was telling his audience that, when fate hands you something unpleasant, make the best of it. When fate hands me that kind of lemon, I would more than likely stare at it for a moment and say something like, "I don't think that lemon is mine," and walk away.

When fate or, more often than not, the supermarket checker hands me an actual lemon, I am more likely to own it. When fate hands me Meyer lemons, I get happy.

I am not about to delve into the history and genetics of the Meyer lemon today. Others have done it well enough that I do not have to. I suggest you let our own Amy Sherman tell you about them. Read her blog post on Meyer lemons.

If you want a few ideas as to what you can do with Meyer lemons, read another Amy's (Scattergood) fun list "100 things to do with a Meyer lemon" from the Los Angeles Times online to get some great ideas. Some are oddly practical, like playing fetch with them in order to freshen canine breath. If you can come up with other uses, please let me know. No one has mentioned the Meyer lemon as an elbow-softener. Perhaps there are few people who still care for supple joints as I do.

And if you really, really want to know everything you could possibly want to know about the lemon, its history, and its uses, by all means go out and buy yourself a copy of Much Depends on Dinner by Margaret Visser. It's quite a fascinating read.

Look, I just like lemons. Perhaps it's my Sicilian heritage and the fact that my ancestors actually earned their bread and marmellata exporting the little yellow fruits. Which leads me to wonder that, had Dale Carnegie been born, say, Dale Carneghi, he might have said, "When fate hands you a lemon, make limoncello." But he wasn't and he didn't, so I am stuck with making lemonade for the purposes of today's post.

It strikes me as a cruel twist of fate that a fruit which makes such a great summer thirst-quencher should reach its peak in the dead of winter, but that isn't going to stop me from making it. One still needs to stave off scurvy, even in the chilly months. What better way to pretend that winter isn't happening than to wear gingham, put some zinc oxide on your nose and pour yourself a tall glass of lemonade? It is denial perfected. After all, I believe it was Mr. Carnegie who also said, "Happiness doesn't depend on any external conditions, it is governed by our mental attitude." I am not going to argue with him about that. With that as my new credo, I shall chose to pretend it isn't raining outside, my complexion isn't pasty, and I haven't gained 10 pounds. Instead, you'll find me inhabiting my inner world, where it's perpetually sunny, and I am always tan and thin. Thanks for the motivation, Dale.

Meyer Lemonade

Meyer lemons are ideal for making lemonade. Lacking confidence in their own identity (half lemon, half mandarin), they share space well with others. Three flavors that blend well (in lemonade) with the fruit are mint, cucumber, and coriander. Yes, coriander. Don't ask me how I know. I have chosen mint today because it is pretty.

Ingredients:

1 cup freshly squeezed Meyer lemon juice-- about 5 to 6 lemons, depending upon size and juiciness. You can actually squeeze them the night before-- the juice won't separate like orange juice does.

1 cup simple syrup. Mint is added to mine here. I'm not telling you how to make simple syrup.

3 to 4 cups cold, clean water.

Mint sprigs and (very) thinly sliced Meyer lemons for garnish.

Ice cubes, if you're into them. I find they keep the garnish from floating to the top.

Preparation:

1. Take all the ingredients and dump them into a big enough pitcher. Stir and serve.

Or, if you want to be very French about it and serve it comme un vrai citron pressé...

1. Place lemon juice and syrup in the antique apothecary beakers you found for next to nothing at the marché aux puces in Dijon last autumn. Place on a tray with chilled, bottled Volvic, one pastis glass and spoon per person, and a pack of Gauloises Blondes. Let your guests prepare their own concoctions, according to personal taste.

Note: If you opt for cucumber lemonade, slice up a cucumber thinly, add to the water and refrigerate for 24 hours. For coriander? I haven't quite figured that one out. I'll let you know when I do.

Serves 4 to 6.