I tried the whole thing with blending up veggies and meat and freezing them in ice cube trays. I had a baby nose turned up enough times to give up on that idea really quickly. Both of my kids were always far more interested in what was on my plate.
My theory is that babies have the best sense of taste they will ever have in their lives, and therefore their sense of smell must be pretty good, too. We spend an hour or so preparing and cooking dinner, and they can smell all of this going on. Then we offer them some bland mash which is nothing like what they were expecting.
My second baby wanted to chew pretty much from five months, so she got vegies mashed with a fork on the side of my plate, and tiny, tiny pieces of meat.
I always had a jar of something, in case what we were eating was off-limits (junk food, too spicy, too salty, etc) but mostly my kids ate what we ate.