Brandon Dill / The (Memphis, Tenn.) Commercial Appeal / MCTThis simple salad — with candied pecans, feta cheese and mixed greens — is one that uses extra-healthful ingredients to the max. One caution: Nuts are good, but they still pack in calories, to don’t go overboard. See more nutrition tips in the recipes below.

Whether you want to enjoy a salad at your favorite restaurant, breeze through a salad bar for a quick and nutritious lunch or stock your fridge and pantry so you can make a bountiful salad at home, one thing is for sure: Now is the time to do it.

While much of the U.S. is a long time away from harvesting local lettuce, our appetites — oh, really, our very souls — are ready to put winter behind us and put the stock pot in a dark closet.

“It’s nice to eat seasonally,” said Amy Schiller, healthy eating specialist at Whole Foods in Memphis, Tenn.

Tips from the pros

Schiller, who is working on her master’s degree in clinical nutrition, offers dietary advice to store customers. Diabetics can schedule an appointment with her, as can anyone who wants to learn to be vegetarian or vegan, lower cholesterol or just drop a few pounds.

Meanwhile, cookbook author Jennifer Chandler — who published “Simply Salads” in 2007, inspired by bags of precleaned salad greens in the grocery store; the book was the first in her “Simply” series, which also includes “Simply Suppers” and “Simply Grilling” (another book, “The Southern Pantry Cookbook,” will be released in September) — weighs in with tips of her own. In her salad book, she advised her readers that a home washing was unnecessary, and she stands by that today.

“I think that the technology over the years has only gotten better,” she said.

And here’s a tip from her: “I advise people to buy in the clamshell instead of a bag because the salad lasts longer, if only because it’s handled less.”

Whichever you prefer, Chandler says you should store the greens in whatever you buy them in.

“Both the clamshell and the bag are specially designed,” she said. “They’re breathable, so keep the salad in the packaging, and it will last longer.”

Schiller is also a fan of clamshell-packaged salads, agreeing that the greens don’t need to be washed before eating (in fact, some studies say that washing the precleaned mix at home only heightens the risk of introducing contaminants, so take the easy way out, and know it’s the best thing, too).

In season, Chandler will buy salad greens from farmers markets, and she offers a good tip for the often-buggy heads that beats picking out the pests: Store the head of lettuce in a salad spinner, root end up, in the refrigerator for several hours. The cold kills the bugs, which fall to the bottom of the container. Toss them, and proceed with your salad. Chandler says cutting is fine, but use a very sharp knife, and don’t cut your greens until just before you use them.

Schiller is a vegan, so her salads contain no animal products. She relies on nuts, seeds, beans and grains for protein. (Salads, with meat or not, fit with her store’s nutrition philosophy of eating nutrient-dense whole foods with an emphasis on a plant-strong diet. “The question I ask is, ‘Would your great-grandmother recognize this?’” she said.)

Cut the calories

While salads can make a protein-packed meal for the omnivorous among us, the calories in a restaurant salad or one prepared at a salad bar can be astounding. Keep these tips in mind:

• Start your salad with a generous serving of healthy greens. While kale, a superfood, is available at many Whole Foods salad bars, you won’t find it everywhere. Generally, the darker the leaf, the healthier it is — so pick dark green spinach over pale iceberg, or at least mix in a bit.

• Load up on all the fresh vegetables you want, such as tomatoes, mushrooms, onion, peppers, broccoli, cucumber and so on.

• Nuts and seeds are healthy, but they’re high in calories, so use sparingly.

• Diced meats such as ham or turkey have less fat than cheese. According to myfitnesspal.com, a 1-ounce serving of Virginia ham contains 30 calories, 3 grams of protein and 1 gram of fat. The same amount of cheddar cheese weighs in with 114 calories, 9 grams of fat and 7 grams of protein.

• Stay away from mayonnaise-laden sides such as pasta, chicken or tuna salad, and use care even when adding on a scoop of hummus or olive salad; a small amount is fine, but they can be high in fat.

• It’s the salad dressing that will kill you. Two tablespoons of Thousand Island has 120 to 130 calories, almost all fat. The little plastic cups on salad bars are usually 2 ounces, which is 4 tablespoons.

• Fight the fat by making your own salad. That means dressing it at home, too. With the variety of greens available, there’s no reason not to.