What are Grits Anyway?

One of my English commenter's asked me to explain grits.
The Southern United States is also known as the "grits belt" and is basically all the states across the South from North Carolina to Louisiana. Grits are merely ground corn. In earlier times almost every town of any size has a gristmill where the local people would bring their corn to be ground into meal for baking. After grinding the meal was passed over a screen with the finer grind falling through and the coarser meal left behind and these coarser bits of corn became known as "grits".
Grits as served in the South is merely a porridge made by mixing these grits with water and cooking them for 20 minutes or so until tender. These are invariably breakfast food and just served with a little butter. I personally like my sunny side up egg served on top of the grits and then mix the yellow of the egg into the grits. I also like a couple of dashes of Tobasco on grits. Mixing cheddar cheese into the grits right at the end of cooking is another popular variation.
You can go upscale with grits and you find lots of restaurants along the the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina offering BBQ Shrimp and grits. Typically these grits have been prepared with milk and or cream instead of water and they are very nice.
If you are into Italian food you have probably had grits only them "eye-taluns" call grits polenta and they usually serve it a bit thicker than we do down south. Either as polenta or grits it is a good hearty food.
If anyone is interested in recipes for grits(such as low country BBQ Shrimp and grits or anything else just leave me a comment and I will post a couple. If it is one thing I know how to cook it is grits and as a matter of fact it might be the first food I ever cooked.

Note: Sometimes people call grits(which is simply ground corn) "hominy grits" which is something a little different in which the corn kernels are first treated with lye (nixtamalized) and rinsed creating hominy which is then dried and ground. Cooked the same way but not true Southern grits.