Believe me, it'll be less hassle using a microcontroller. Use a PIC with built in UART and ADC and it's even easier...

With a UART, you'll need to generate the baud rate clock, and work out some interfacing logic to get the read/write strobes doing what you want. Something like a 6850 is probably what you need if you want to go down that route - but I wouldn't recommend it. Get a PIC starter kit or something similar (AVR, etc)

Hugo