Vindaloo-crazy have you tried this site......
http://www.indiacurry.com
If you have a dig through it you'll find the recipes for most spice mixes and pastes.
I use it for making pastes, that way i can leave out any vinegar or better still citrus which Jen's allergic to.
Better still....
http://www.indiacurry.com/spice/kashmirigarammasala.htm

I find that garlic/ginger paste wont burn as easily as chopped garlic does when frying.
Also the easiest way to cool the pan if its getting too hot is to take it off the heat.
I also aggree with watching the pan like a hawk, its a very hands on thing is making a curry, and when you have spent so much time and effort getting, preparing, measuring and pre-cooking then the last thing you want is to ruin the whole thing by not spending the right amount of time on finishing it. You need to relax and enjoy the cooking process.
Also the more relaxed you are the more you'll notice the little things that might just be that missing something.
I'm happy with me Balti recipe, it does exactly what i want it to.
Happy with my pilau rice (recipes on here somewhere).
Happy with my Naan breads.
The Recipe on here for the F-words Tandoori chicken is the best recipe by far that i have tried. Its perfect for my tastes.
I'm happy with my Bhaji's, simple and tasty, the recipes on here somewhere too.
I'm happy with the fact that when i made a balti for my Brother he remarked that "There's nothing in here that you wouldn't get in a restaurant".
I'm happy, knowing honestly, that whenever i go anywhere for a Balti/Dupiaza i come away afterwards thinking "Mine are better".
I'm unhappy about being 350 miles away from my kitchen and spice collection.
I'm very unhappy about being away from the missus.

Im just outside Highley staying with my parents, Timber built home with real fires, theres actually about 30-40 little chalets along the severn valley here with people living in them, most are elderly but everyone looks after each other.
Heres the postcode if you want to have a look via google maps, satelite image is pretty good with lots of zoom.
Wv166nu. My Parents are considering selling up so if anyones interested let me know.
The golf cours 14th green is about 50 footsteps out of the front gate.
The train station is Highley, we only get Steam trains through here and the Father xmas special is running now i believe.

Im in Shropshire at the mo and we've had about an inch of snow all told, the frost here is pretty thick though, i don't think i've ever seen it so thick. It makes for some beautifull xmas photo's.
Jen's at home in Wooler which is near Berwick-upon-tweed, So far Jens had about 4 foot of snow, about a foot more than we had there the same time last year. There are icicles hanging off the gutters up there that are over a metre in length. An old Lady was knocked unconscious on the high street the other day when a lump of ice and snow slid off a shop roof and hit her, her friend was ok but had to be dug out.
Both old Ladies are fine.
I feckin hate the snow, when you have tiled a roof, in the falling snow, within sight of the ocean, with an arctic wind blowing at you. Any silly, romantic ideas of that fluffy white stuff are soon dispelled.

Yep burned, and i definately had it set on low.  It could have been me, my curry might have been too thick to begin with, maybe i never stirred it often enough.
Either way i burned me ruby murry and wasn't happy about it  .
Theres another thing i didn't like about it, in the destructions it tells you to stir often.
Well i thought the one of the main selling points of a slow cooker was the fact that you can put food in it and sod off out till its ready. Lets face it you can't, you would have to keep coming back from wherever you were out at, to come back in to stir your grub, just so you could go back out. Thats just too much fussing about for me. I mean they should just re-name em hokey-cokey cookers, that way you would know where you stand, or hop or whatever it is you do mid Hokey-cokey.
Just an oppinion of course!.  ;D

Oh its easy, just add curry, put lid on, set on LOW and leave for two hours.
Was a Russel hobbs thing cost about fifty quid.

G@d, it sounds just like mediaeval foot torture 
Lol

There will always be a place in my Heart for a Vesta curry lol.
As for takeaways closing down or dwindling away, i can't say as i've noticed it, and from the way the immigration department keeps going on about "There's a shortage of Indian Chef's, lets import a few thousand", i can't see it happening.
The fact that there are more high end/posh Indian restaurants around now isn't surprising at all really, i mean its just the natural progression of things, a takeaway gets a good name>becomes a restaurant, can charge more> becomes posh restaurant, can charge more.
Its just business.

Hehe forgot to mention, also the thing that stuck out to me most about the whole Tandoori cooking segment was when they painted the finished Naans with melted butter.
This for me is enough to show that the Naans would have been proper ones. You can't beat a Naan thats been liberally smothered in Ghee/Butter!, Even better, painted then bunged back in to give a nice sweet crunch on the blisters.

I've only ever used a slow cooker once and managed to burn my curry. Since then it has been re-housed at the step daughters house where it will probably spend the rest of its days chatting up the other never used oddments we all have stashed away in easy to forget about places.
If its for cooking onions i reckon pressure cookers are the way to go.