Just to clear up a few things...
Hominy is dried maize kernels which have been treated with an alkali in a process called nixtamalization.
Native American cultures made hominy and integrated it into their diet. Cherokees, for example, made hominy
grits by soaking corn in a weak lye solution obtained by leaching hardwood ash with water and beating it with a kanona, or corn beater.
A bowl of cooked hominy:
Kernels are about twice the size of the original corn kernels.Soaking the corn in lye kills the seed's germ, which keeps it from sprouting while in storage. In addition to preserving the grain as foodstuff, this process also affords several significant nutritional advantages over untreated maize products. It converts some of the niacin (and possibly other B vitamins) into a form more absorbable by the body, improves the availability of the amino acids, and (at least in the lime-treated variant) supplements the calcium content, balancing maize's comparative excess of phosphorus.
Grits have their origins in Native American corn preparation. Traditionally, the dried corn for grits was ground by a stone mill. The results are passed through screens, with the finer siftings being grit meal (corn meal), and the coarser being grits.
Hominy grits - Grits made from dried hominy.
Not the same as just 'grits.
Granny would order a 'center cut of ham' from the butcher.
We'd have it for an evening meal.
She fried it up in her cast iron frying pan and then fry a can of whole hominy in behind it, scraping up all the 'goody bits' for flavor.
Fantastic and I haven't had that in about 60 years.
:-)