I want to thank you Steve, Bruce, Enrique and Eric for your help so far. You have given me some suggestions and pointed me in the right direction. I've looked through all the information. I'm leaning toward an SSR to control the heating element with PWM. Also in the process I've found that by using this technique you can increase the life of the heating element dramatically. Although not good for parts sales, I would rather have a more reliable system.
This solves the second part of my question. For the first part of reading the temperature, I'm still investigating Linear's LT1025 and matching amplifier.
Oh yeah, Eric I've been thinking noise and thinking noise, but all I've gotten is a headache :(

Jon