I bought an Aero-Garden on QVC recently. It's pretty cool. It came with two boxes of seeds -- one is a variety of lettuce and the other is a variety of herbs.
All you need is a small area of your countertop for the Aero-Garden. Plants grow in a matter of a few short weeks -- no dirt, no weeding, no pesticides. You just add water to the machine and the machine does the rest.
Here's the Aero-Garden website:
http://www.aerogrow.com/