Get ready for Pancake Day

Strap on the old feed bag. It's almost Shrove Tuesday.

Also known as Fat Tuesday, Pancake Day, or Mardi Gras, Shrove Tuesday is a religious celebration just before the start of Lent. Rev. Marshall Crossnoe, the vicar at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Portland and St. Albans' in Fulton, said the roots of Shrove Tuesday has to do with church denominations that celebrate Lent.

"It's a custom from people anticipating Lent," he said. "You weren't supposed to eat a lot of sugar and fat, so the custom became to raid the pantry and eat up all the butter, sugar and flower in the house before Lent."

The denominations that continue to observe Lent carry on this tradition, he said, while the celebratory aspect has leaked into mainstream culture.

"It became the party of Mardi Gras," Crossnoe said. "This giant blow out before having to restrain yourself for six weeks."

St. Mark's congregation celebrates the day by cooking up pancakes and sausage for anyone looking to get their grub on. They will be serving 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Portland Community Building, 10520 Main Cross, Portland, Mo.

"I have been at St. Mark's for 10 years, and they have been doing it even before then," he said. "There are folks who regularly come from Fulton, and even outside that, that drive over for the pancakes."

Little known pancake facts:

The largest pancake in the world was cooked up in Rochdale (Britain) in 1994, weighing in at 6,614 pounds (that's three ton) and measuring 49 feet, 3 inches long.

If you feel guilty about using readymade pancake mix, don't worry - people have been doing it forever. Aunt Jemimas was invented in St Joseph, (Missouri) in 1889 and is claimed to be the first ever readymade pancake mixture to be sold.

Pancake races happen all over England throughout Shrove Tuesday. The tradition is thought to have originated in Olney in the 15th century, after a woman lost track of time while cooking pancakes. When the bells for mass rang, she ran out of her house with the pan and pancake still in hand. Olney still holds a pancake race every year.

The largest number of pancake flips in the shortest amount of time is currently 349 flips in two minutes, a record achieved by Dean Gould in Felixstowe, Suffolk, in 1995.

In Newfoundland, Canada, objects with symbolic value are added to the batter to be cooked. These items are then used to interpret different messages about the future - for example, a pancake served with a ring inside may signify marriage.

In France, it is traditional while flipping a pancake to hold a coin in one hand and to make a wish.

It is estimated that an impressive 52 million eggs are used in Britain each year on pancake day - that's 22 million more than every other day of the year.

The French call pancake day Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday. This originates from the ancient ritual of parading a large ox through Paris to remind people that meat was forbidden during the Lent period.