Many moons a go when i was still living with my parents i used to use a tin of baked beans, Heinz, and sieve the juice and use that for my base so to speak and add curry powder, cumin, coriander powder and fresh coriander adding chicken then putting the drained beans back in to the dish, it was lovely. Also made plenty of curries using lentil based soups, carrot and coriander, potato and leek, french onion soup is by far the best, see cook4one site.
Used to have quite a few veggie friends in the early eighties so when we used to doss round friends flats everything was tried, one friend used to boil all sorts of vegetables in a big pot and the taste was just out of this world, reminds me of the bases on here really.
Never occurred to me until yesterday when i was making CA's base and this smell entered my nostrils and i was a teenager again the smell was just the same, the only thing i did different was not stir the base.
When Kwik Save shops used to be the in thing i made a recipe book just using the Kwiksave brands for a few friends with around 7-8 curry recipes in there using soups, wish i could find it.