My classmates raved about another free pancake day at IHOP this week, but frequenters warned inquirers that the wait for some after-school breakfast would be long.

Earlier this week -Tuesday, Feb. 23 it was, to be exact- wasn’t just any ordinary free pancake day, though. It was in celebration of National Pancake Day. Who knows where this holiday originated, but I am definitely in favor of taking off school to eat delicious, warm, fluffy, butter-topped and sweet syrup-drenched pancakes. Yum.

IHOP recognizes the silly holiday with free food in return for asking for its customers to donate at the door. “Stacks for Good Acts” they call it. IHOP will give you one short stack of three pancakes for any donation that you make, donations going toward local children’s hospitals through Children’s Miracle Network. Last year, IHOP raised a total of $1.3 million for these hospitals through its ten hours of free pancakes, 7 in the morning to 10 at night (of which I’m sure the kitchen was busy every minute). The amount raised this year has not yet be totaled, but for over the past five years (since 2006) that IHOP has been holding this event, the International House of Pancakes has raised $5 million dollars. I guess better put is: pancake lovers nationwide donated $5 million dollars since 2006 to get a hold of IHOP’s famed flapjacks.

IHOP advertised their free pancake day through tv commercials and -did you know?- having Miss America 2010 as their National Pancake Day spokesperson. Miss America Caressa Cameron stated  “one of my first tasks as Miss America is to serve as a national spokesperson for IHOP’s National Pancake Day,” which although it really, really does sound sill, mind it was for a good cause.

IHOP found other cool ways to hype the event. For example, fans could have entered to win free pancakes for a year, or sign-up to receive a wake-up call/ reminder of pancake day from a celebrit.