dak246:
Use a simple potential divider circuit to level-shift the sensor voltage to the PIC's input range. If you don't really care much for the temperatures outside those which produce 0-5V, use a 5.1V zener diode across the PIC's input, and put a resistor in series with the sensor.
In my opinion, the AVR's support for C is much better than for the smaller PICs, both in terms of availability of tools and in terms of internal architecture -- the AVR is designed from the ground up to be programmed in C. Also, gcc has been ported to the AVR, so there exist open-source development tools for the same. AFAIK, no such tools exist for the PIC.